R v Dudley and Stephens (1884) is a landmark English criminal case that established the principle that necessity is not a defence to a murder accusation across the common law globe. It was about surviving cannibalism after a shipwreck, and how it was said to be justified by a maritime tradition. It was the culmination of a long history of legal attempts to outlaw the practice (cases of which were little-publicized until after the perpetrators’ deaths), and it became a legal cause célèbre in late 19th century Britain, particularly among mariners, in the face of a bank of public opinion sympathetic to famished castaways.

Along with two other guys, Dudley and Stephens were shipwrecked. When one of them, cabin boy Richard Parker, became unconscious, Dudley and Stephens decided to murder him for food.

Following a storm, the two defendants and youth aged seventeen to eighteen were thrown adrift in an open boat at sea. The boat was drifting in the ocean, more than a thousand kilometres from the nearest shore. S proposed that after seven days without food and five days without water, lots be drawn, and the loser be executed to supply sustenance for the remaining two. However, D and Slater collaborated to the point where the kid was to be murdered so that they may live. D murdered the child on the twentieth day with S’s consent, and both defendants ate him for the next four days until he was rescued. It was claimed that the defendants thought they would perish unless the child was murdered under the circumstances.

In this case, the question was whether murdering the child was justified for the defendants to live. In other words, if the defendants might argue that the killing was necessary, resulting in a murder defence.

On December 4, the Queen’s Bench Division convened under Lord Chief Justice Lord Coleridge. The prosecution was represented by James, who was joined by Charles and Danckwerts. The Exeter trial report was read out in its full at the start of the hearing, at some length. Collins was able to claim that the special verdict had been changed as a result of this. As much was finally acknowledged, and it was eventually decided that the exceptional verdict should be restored to the jury’s version. The courts dismissed the ensuing effort to dispute the jurisdiction.

Collins argued that the court lacked jurisdiction since the Exeter jury had not delivered a conditioned verdict (an open statement that the jury would find in line with the court’s legal decision). Judges, particularly Grove, were disturbed by this, but it was disregarded as a matter of form – judges alone reverse judgments based on law.

There was no common law authority to support the notion that necessity was a defence to murder, according to James. Because it had not been officially documented in the law reports, the Saint Christopher case was dismissed as a precedent.

Lord Coleridge told Collins to limit his comments to murder so that he might reject the notion of necessity as a partial defence leading to a manslaughter conviction by comparison with the partial defence of provocation. Collins replied by referencing the United States v. Holmes (1842) and going through the different theoretical and ethical grounds for a necessity defence.

The judges withdrew after he finished his submissions. “We are all of the views that the conviction should be confirmed,” Lord Coleridge stated after a few minutes, “but we shall put our arguments in paper and deliver them on Saturday next.” Lord Coleridge committed Dudley and Stephens to Holloway Prison until the court delivered its reasons and sentence on Tuesday, December 9th, after the considerable technical legal debate.

Based on legal precedence, as well as ethics and morals, the panel determined that there was no defence of necessity to a charge of murder.

In general, it is a responsibility to protect one’s life, but it may be the most basic and greatest obligation to sacrifice one’s life. There are many occasions in the war when it is a man’s responsibility to die rather than live. In the event of a shipwreck, the captain’s duty to his crew, the crew to the passengers, and soldiers to women and children, as in the noble case of the Birkenhead; these duties impose on men the moral necessity, not of preservation, but of the sacrifice of their lives for others, from which no country, least of all, it is hoped, England, will ever shrink, as they have in the past.

… It would be a very easy and inexpensive display of commonplace learning to quote passage after passage from Greek and Latin authors, from Horace, Juvenal, Cicero, and Euripides, in which the duty of dying for others has been laid down in glowing and emphatic language as resulting from the principles of heathen ethics; it is enough in a Christian country to remind ourselves of the Great Examp.

Furthermore, if the concept were to be accepted, the justices questioned who was competent to decide who should live and who should die. They went on to say that such a concept might serve as a “legal cover for unrestrained emotion and heinous crime.” They were well aware of the men’s dire situation.

It must not be assumed that by refusing to accept temptation as a justification for crime, one forgets how horrible the temptation was, how terrible the suffering was, and how difficult it is to keep one’s judgement straight and one’s behaviour pure under such circumstances. We are often forced to create standards that we are unable to meet and to establish rules that we are unable to follow. However, a man has no authority to proclaim temptation to be an excuse, even though he may have succumbed to it himself, nor to enable sympathy for the criminal to alter or diminish the legal definition of the crime in any way.

With a request for compassion, Dudley and Stephens were condemned to the statutory death penalty.

Aishwarya Says:

I have always been against Glorifying Over Work and therefore, in the year 2021, I have decided to launch this campaign “Balancing Life”and talk about this wrong practice, that we have been following since last few years. I will be talking to and interviewing around 1 lakh people in the coming 2021 and publish their interview regarding their opinion on glamourising Over Work.

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