This case has been sitting in my bookmarks for a hot minute now, so let’s take a look!

You may have heard bits and pieces of this case before since it’s such a classic. I vaguely recall philosophical puzzles that talk about something similar to this case.

R v Dudley and Stephens (1884)

TLDR: Three boys were stranded in a lifeboat on the open sea. After a week, they decided to draw lots to decide who would be killed for food. However, it was established that the two eventual survivors silently decided to kill the youngest, weakest boy. They did eventually killing the boy. Was this murder?

Held: Even if the two survivors reasonably believed that killing someone was the only way to stay alive, that didn’t excuse them from a murder verdict. They were given life sentences, but there was a public uproar. Their sentence was eventually lessened to six months of imprisonment.

Interesting Quote From the Verdict

We are often compelled to set up standards we cannot reach ourselves, and to lay down rules which we could not ourselves satisfy. But a man has no right to declare temptation to be an excuse, though he might himself have yielded to it, nor allow compassion for the criminal to change or weaken in any manner the legal definition of the crime. It is therefore our duty to declare that the prisoners’ act in this case was willful murder, that the facts as stated in the verdict are no legal justification of the homicide; and to say that in our unanimous opinion the prisoners are upon this special verdict guilty, of murder.

Judgement, delivered by Lord Coleridge CJ

Necessity

It should be noted that the concept of necessity was established to not apply here.

Necessity is a defense that states that it was necessary for the crime to be committed.

For a case where necessity applies (conjoined twins case), check out our previous law post where we discussed duress and necessity.