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R v Dudley and Stephens (1884) 14 QBD 273, DC is a leading English criminal case which established a precedent throughout the common law world that necessity is not a defence to a charge of murder. The case concerned survival cannibalism following a shipwreck, and its purported justification on the basis of a custom of the sea.
Learn about the UK law case of R v Dudley and Stephens, where two defendants killed a boy to survive at sea and claimed necessity as a defence to murder. Find out the facts, issues, decision and outcome of this landmark judgment.
A case brief of the 1884 murder trial of two sailors who killed a fellow seaman to survive at sea. The brief summarizes the facts, issue, holding, and rule of law of the case, and provides a citation.
R v Dudley and Stephens (1884) 14 QBD 273. The two defendants became shipwrecked by a storm. They were forced to abandon their ship and were stranded in a small emergency boat with two others including a young cabin boy. They had been stranded for 18 days.
Regina v. Dudley and Stephens. Queen's Bench Division. 1884 Dec. 9. LORD COLERIDGE, C.J. The two prisoners, Thomas Dudley and Edwin Stephens, were indicted for the murder of Richard Parker on the high seas on the 25th of July in the present year.
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A man who, in order to escape death from hunger, kills another for the purpose of eating his flesh, is guilty of murder; although at the time of the act he is in such circumstances that he believes and has reasonable ground for believing that it affords the only chance of preserving his life.
The leading English case, Regina v. Dudley and Stephens (1884) 14 Q.B.D. 273, appears to reject the necessity defense in homicide cases. In German or French courts, however, the defendants would probably have been acquitted.
