Warning
Info
- - tl;dr
- - ICRA
- - Facts & Holding
- - DeepDive
0 0
14 Q.B.D. 273
tl;dr:
Three seamen and one boy lost at sea with no food for 24 days. Two men killed and ate boy; guilty of murder despite necessity because was not in self-defense.Case Summary
In the 1884 case Regina v. Dudley and Stephens, England's High Court dealt with a famous instance of survival cannibalism and whether necessity could be used as a defense for murder. The case involved four shipwrecked sailors stranded on a lifeboat without supplies. After 20 days, Dudley and Stephens suggested killing one person to provide food for the others. Brooks disagreed, but Parker, the youngest and weakest, didn't object. On the 24th day, Dudley and Stephens killed Parker and the three surviving sailors ate his flesh and blood. Four days later, they were rescued. Dudley and Stephens were charged with murder, while Brooks wasn't.
This case is significant because it established that necessity isn't a valid defense for murder in English law. The defendants claimed they acted out of necessity to save their lives, arguing Parker would have died anyhow. The court disagreed, ruling that taking an innocent life is never justified by necessity, even in dire circumstances. The court reasoned that allowing such a defense could lead to abuses, and human life must be respected and protected. The court also pointed out that the defendants didn't hold a lottery or get Parker's consent before killing him. The court found Dudley and Stephens guilty of murder and initially sentenced them to death, but later reduced their sentences to six months in prison.
LSD+ Case Briefs
Features
- DeepDive for detailed case analysis
- Over 50,000 existing case briefs
- Instant briefs for another 6,000,000 cases
- Highlight dictionary for legal term definitions
- Social learning with chat and high points
Over 50,000 Cases Briefed
LSD+ gives you access to over 50,000 case briefs, more than anyone else. Be the first to email us the website of a case brief product that offers you more case briefs and we'll give you a free year of LSD+.
14-Day Free Trial
Unlimited access. Read as much content as you want during your trial with no device limitations. Cancel any time during your trial and keep access for the full 14 days.
Integrated Legal Dictionary
Lawyers and judges love to use big words. And Latin, for some reason.
Highlight a legal term in LSD Briefs and get an instant, plain English definition. Try highlighting contract or specific performance. No need to search or read through a list of definitions, simply highlight the words you don’t know and our LSDefine integration will instantly give you a definition to any of over 30,000 legal terms.
DeepDive
DeepDive allows you to explore legal cases like never before. DeepDive offers multiple levels of case summaries, which empowers you to quickly and easily find the information you need to stay on top of readings. Easily navigate through summary levels and click on any text to get more detail, all the way down to the original legal case text.
Brief anything. Instantly.
Our proprietary state-of-the-art system can instantly brief over 6,000,000 US cases. That means we can probably brief that case that your professor assigned last night when she sent you a poorly scanned pdf and told you to read every third paragraph. Or maybe she uploaded it to Canvas and didn’t really tell you to read it, but you know you probably should. Tenure does wild things to good people.
Social Learning with Chat and High Points
Study groups are a great way to learn and explore a case. LSD has chat rooms for each case to let you ask questions across the community and hear what other students struggled with and how they put it all together. Learn the key points of every case from other LSD+ users and share your knowledge with LSD High Points.
Real-Time Brief Feedback
Don’t settle for mistakes in briefs that have been there for 10 years and never fixed. Find an issue or something missing from a brief? Down vote and we will make improvements. All of our case brief editors graduated from from T14 law schools.