Regina v. Dudley and Stephenson

So if you’ve been reading up on your Criminal Law, you’d probably have come across this case. If you haven’t, and for the laymen (and i mean this term not with derision but with envy, because you guys are possibly pursuing interests you might actually believe in. Unless of course you study business. In which case I eagerly look forward to your future career as a door to door salesperson.) the case involved a ghastly turn of events. A boat was sunk and the survivors had to resort to drinking their own urine and cannibalism to survive. And as if the horror of that wasn’t enough, the killer still ended up being charged for murder, in the face of stiff public support for him.

Of course there was a lot more than just these facts. There was a series of machinations happening between judges and a possible enforcement of moral principals. This wiki article covers all the sordid details. Suffice to say though, the case once (the law has thankfully been reviewed) stood for the rule that murder cannot be excused by necessity.

So, in some inspired moments of boredom, I decided to rewrite the judgment in prose. (Yes call me crazy – normal bored people just turn on the telly)

R. v. Dudley and Stephens ([1884] 14 QBD 273 DC)

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Aloof on his mahogany tower,

The Judge spoke down to a rapt court

I have reviewed the facts of the case, he says

Which I shall now summarize briefly.

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Here are the dramatis personae,

A cabin boy barely bearded

A killer bent on the blackest of survival

Come what may the cost.

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And two witless accomplices, who

Like the crowds at Calvary did nothing;

Choosing docile participation

Over the moral fortitude to intervene.

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Our scene is the bosom of the high seas,

Where a foul wind cast our actors adrift.

Prisoner to their tiny life boat,

And tempted, as she was in the Garden.

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Allow the worms of hunger to over come them

And face most certain death.

Or feast on one of their own number,

And face less certain death.

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My learned country men, we cannot accept an excuse of necessity.

Indeed, such circumstance impose on men the moral necessity,

Not of the preservation, but of the sacrifice of their lives for others,

From which in no country, least of all, it is to be hoped, in England,

Will men ever shrink, as indeed, they have not shrunk.

.

It is hence my opinion, that there will be no excuse.

No Speluncean Explorers or Carneadian Plank

Will come to the rescue of the accused, who was duty bound to die.

To not find guilty, would be a mockery of our Great Example.

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Guilty for murder, as charged.

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The Judge retires to a clamor in the court.

He walks briskly past the tea lady and court room cleaners.

All of whom, by necessity of economics,

Squeeze out a pittance of a daily wage.

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In his life of powdered wigs and silken robes,

How fortunate then for the Judge

That the Great Example never spoke of

The necessity to be poor.

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* note: Great Example, as lifted from the judgment itself, refers to Jesus Christ.

P.s. Cursed formatting forces me to use periods to separate stanzas