  The familiar account might be thought to be on firmer ground when it comes to excuses. Grant that to plead an excuse is indeed to deny culpability. The same is true of a justification. So there is nothing here to distinguish the two. Do excuses, then, deny responsibility? At least sometimes, they do not. True, those who plead insanity deny that they were capable of responding to reasons when they acted. But this is not true of other excusatory pleas. Imagine \(T\) bursts into \(D\)’s house and threatens to shoot \(D\) unless \(D\) shoots \(V\). If \(D\) pleads duress, \(D\) relies on the fact that her capacity to respond to reasons remained intact: her plea is that she offended in order to avoid the harm threatened by \(T\), and in doing so lived up to our reasonable expectations. \(D\) thereby asserts rather than denies responsibility for an offending act (Gardner 2007, 82–87). This does not mean that duress is a justification. \(V\)’s right to life defeats the reasons \(D\) has to save her own. \(D\) has a defence because we do not expect any more from someone in \(D\)’s predicament—because we can understand why saving her own life seemed a good enough reason to \(D\) (Simester 2012, 105).