The Bench · 1884 · The Queen’s Bench, London

R v Dudley and Stephens (1884): is necessity a defence to murder?

What is your ruling?

The case

Told from where the person who decided stood. In the game each line is written into a drawing as you tap.

A yacht sinks in the Atlantic. Four men are left in an open boat with almost no food and no water.
After nineteen days the cabin boy, Richard Parker, seventeen, lies close to death. The captain says one must die so that three may live.
No lots are drawn. The captain kills the boy. The three men live on his body, and four days later a ship finds them.
Home in England, the captain and the mate are tried for murder. They deny nothing. Their defence is one word: necessity.

Guilty of murder.Necessity is no excuse for killing. The only sentence the law allows for murder is death.
Not guilty.One would have died anyway. Three lived. The law now says a starving man may kill.

Make the call in the game Free. No account. Two minutes.

Guilty of murder. The court ruled that necessity is no defence for killing an innocent person. The sentence was death.

Then the Crown showed mercy: the sentence was cut to six months in prison.

The court kept the rule, and the Crown spared the men. The case is still taught wherever English law is taught.

Source: R v Dudley and Stephens (1884) 14 QBD 273. Summary: University of Minnesota Law Library, “Classic cases”. lawlibrarycollections.umn.edu/classic-cases-criminal-regina-v-dudley-stephens

History is not an answer key. This page says what was done and what came of it. Whether it was right is the question the case leaves with you.

The same kind of question runs through The Court (What do people deserve?), one of the nine journeys of the game.

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