R v Dudley and Stephens

Facts

Dudley, Stephens, Brooks and a young cabin boy, Parker, were adrift in an open boat in the South Atlantic after their yacht foundered. They had little food and water for many days. Parker, the youngest, was the weakest and was ill from drinking sea water. Dudley killed Parker with a penknife with Stephens's agreement, and Brooks did not assent. The three survivors fed on the body for several days until a passing vessel rescued them.

History

Dudley and Stephens were tried for murder at the Exeter assizes. The jury returned a special verdict setting out the facts and leaving the question of law to the court. The case was referred to a court of five judges of the Queen's Bench Division, which held them guilty of murder. Sentence of death was recorded but was commuted by the Crown to a short term of imprisonment.

Issue

Whether, on the facts found, killing an innocent person to preserve the lives of others in extreme necessity is a defence to a charge of murder.

Held

The defendants were guilty of murder. Necessity is not a defence to the intentional killing of an innocent person, even in circumstances of extreme peril.

Ratio

• Necessity does not justify the deliberate killing of an innocent person, so that a person who intentionally kills another to save his own life or those of others is guilty of murder.

The judgments

Key reasoning

• There is no legal rule that allows the preservation of life to excuse the killing of an innocent and unresisting person, and a test of necessity would be impossible to apply, since the law would have to decide who was to die and by what standard.
• The temptation to kill in extreme cases is no justification, and the fact of extreme hardship cannot alter the law of murder.

Obiter

• The court stressed the distinction between the moral compulsion that may have acted on the defendants and the legal justification for the killing, and said that the question of mercy was for the Crown.

Where it fits in the module

The case is central to general defences because it sets the outer limit on necessity and later on duress. It forces examination of the difference between justification and excuse and whether moral pressure can ever reduce responsibility for killing. It is the starting point for modern discussion of Re A (Conjoined Twins), where necessity was used to justify a medical separation, and of whether the rule against necessity to murder should survive.

Criticisms

• The reasoning is largely moral and rhetorical rather than doctrinal, and the court did not explain why a utilitarian calculation of one life against three was impermissible in law.
• The result is hard to reconcile with the Crown's mercy decision, which suggests a gap between legal guilt and moral blame that a defence could better address.
• The ruling leaves unclear whether the principle applies to cases in which the victim is already about to die or where all parties would otherwise die, as in later conjoined twin litigation.