Dudley and Stephens were sentenced to the statutory death penalty with a recommendation for mercy.
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.
Dudley and Stephens along with Brooks and Parker(victim) were cast away at sea without weeks of food and water except for some turnips and a turtle. After twenty days, Dudley and Stephens proposed one person sacrifice himself in order to save the rest.
Held: The defendants were convicted of murder. The defence of necessity was not allowed. They were sentenced to death but then granted a pardon by the Crown and served 6 months imprisonment.
And it is a criminal case that shook the English society of its day, and still plays with people’s minds today because it de als with the harshest aspects of life and death: survival. The Dudley and Stephens case was decided in 1884 in a very Victorian England, where Queen Victoria ruled a society that was incredibly devout in its Christianity ...
Dudley then said a prayer and used a penknife to kill the boy. The men consumed the flesh. On July 29th they were rescued. At the trial, both Dudley and Stephens were convicted of murder and sentenced to death. But the sentence was commuted to six months in prison.
Dudley and Stephens were shipwrecked when sailing on the English yacht Mignonette , which was a 52-foot cruiser that had been built in 1867.This was long before the days of air travel and campervan hire. It wasn’t the smartest choice for their voyage, as it was an inshore boat and had not been designed for long voyages.
The next day there was still no hope of a rescue. They were still stranded 700 miles from any human contact. Both Dudley and Stephens signalled to one another that Parker should be the one to go.
Everything was going well. But Dudley ordered the crew to “heave to” so that everyone could finally get a good night’s sleep. When the crew completed the heave to, the cabin boy, Parker, was sent below deck for tea.
The other crewman, Brooks, claims he had not been involved in the earlier discussion, and he claimed in court that because of his ignorance he had not given any direct signal to the two men of his agreement or dissent.
Dudley wouldn’t let up, though. He pointed out that both he and Stephens had wives and families, while the Parker boy was an orphan with no connections. The crew still hadn’t come to any agreement though, that night. They all decided to sleep on it. The next day there was still no hope of a rescue.
Regina v. Dudley and Stephens There have been many criminal cases in the history, which brought controversy, whether murder could be justified under different circumstances. One of the famous cases tells a story of four shipwrecked men, which were lost in the high seas.
There are many possibilities and options I could have taken if I were in Dudley’s shoes. Murder Parker, and feed on him; ask for Parker’s consent to kill and consume him; take a vote, or a lottery and then feed on the selected one, assuming there was consensus to the vote or lottery and to its outcome.
In the case R v. Dudley and Stephens, the two sailors should not have been found guilty or charged with murder. I will examine the case with two theories of punishment, retributivism and consequentialism. I am using these two different frameworks because they both have two different requirements in order to justify punishment.
The biggest question that a person could have after knowing “The Queen v. Dudley and Stephens” would be if these three men did was ethical. We are going to use the different opinions from John Stuart Mill and Emmanuel Kant to analyze and see what they say about what is right and what is wrong While reading knowing “The Queen v.
Lifeboat Dilemma¬ Final CASE: The Queen v. Dudley and Stephens FACTS: A boat with four men aboard took on water after being hit by a large wave resulting in boat sinking, during the summer of 1884. All four men boarded a lifeboat however the only provisions were two cans of turnips.
The R v. Dudley and Stephens case occurred in 1884. In May of that year, four men left Southampton, England for Australia on the Mignonette, a private sailing yacht. These men were Captain Thomas Dudley (31), mate Edward Stephens (36), seaman Edmond Brooks (38), and cabin-boy Richard Parker (17).
Analysing Moral and Ethical Issues of the Queen v. Dudley and Stephens. Moral and ethical issues In the case of the Queen v. Dudley and Stephens, there were several moral and ethical issues.