Justified Cannibalism?

The basic run-down for our purposes is that three men (including defendants Dudley and Stephens) and a young boy were stranded at sea on a small emergency boat after they were forced to abandon their ship because of a storm. On the 18th day they were stranded at sea, having no food for the previous seven days and no water for the previous five, one of the men (Dudley) thought it a good idea to draw straws to decide which man should give up his life for the sustenance of the others on the raft (yes, that would be cannibalism). As disturbing as that is, Stephens nevertheless agreed to the “drawing,” but the third man refused. Dudley and Stephens noticed that the boy was rather sickly and did not have a family like they did, so they decided that rather than sacrifice the life of a healthy grown man with a family, it would be more prudent to kill the boy and eat him while they awaited their unlikely rescue.

The court’s recitation of the facts states “the boy was then lying at the bottom of the boat quite helpless and extremely weakened by famine and by drinking sea water, and unable to make any resistance, nor did he ever assent to his being killed. [Dudley] offered a prayer asking forgiveness for them all if either of them should be tempted to commit a rash act, and that their souls might be saved. Dudley, with the assent of Stephens, went to the boy, and telling him that his time was come, put a knife into his throat and killed him then and there; … the three men fed upon the body and blood of the boy for four days; … on the fourth day after the act had been committed the boat was picked up by a passing vessel, and the prisoners were rescued…”

After their rescue, Dudley and Stephens were promptly brought back to England to face a trial for the charge of murder. The other man apparently dissented from the killing but participated in the eating of the boy anyway.

Were the men justified in their actions?
Would choosing of the person to be eaten through drawing straws change your opinion?

Oh, I love Dudley and Stephens. This was the first case they taught in my Criminal law class. This is a great problem because it hits on both legal and moral elements. Dudley and Stephens honestly thought that what they were doing was okay. Their understanding of the necessity defense was that if it was necessary for one person to die to save three, it was acceptable. This seems erroneous from a legal perspective because murder is usually defined as killing with malice aforethought but criminal law in America is trending toward accepting the Model Penal Code, which eliminates malice aforethought. Instead it defines mens rea for murder as acting purposefully, acting knowingly, or acting with extreme indifference to human life (section 210.) Even though the MPC hasn't been widely adopted yet, no matter which way you shake it, they're toast under the law. It doesn't help that there's no statutory support for their legal claim so they were relying entirely on a common law concept.

From a moral perspective, I wouldn't eat anyone for any reason. But that's just me. I'm sure there are plenty of people who would chow down.

What about the third guy? He didn't do any of the work and still got to eat some. What a mooch.

What was the outcome?

I think their method of selecting a child to murder since he did not have a family was an absolute absurdity. They strike me as moronic in that the child could have future children at a future age before the murderers did. They didn't think it through or consider how much older they were than the child when they had children. It was sloppy reasoning at best and missed the whole picture. I think the reasoning was necessary to commit the act and that this individual acted out accordingly.

Drawing straws would of resulted in a slightly better outcome as far as morality is concerned only if all were in agreement to do so but again the problem of the child being a minor would rear it's ugly head and be seen as hainous if he was the one chosen to be eaten.

My bet is the media had a field day with this one considering women and children first for survival is usually the proper etiquette in these matters but not to be mistaken with women and children first for dinner if they don't have kids!

Originally Posted by notatumor

What was the outcome?

Dudley and Stephens were convicted of murder. I actually don't remember what happened to the other guy.

I think they were justified, in their decision to resort to cannibalism. The way i see it is they MAY have broken the laws of man(the laws of man are ever changing and debatable), but they adherred to the much older law of nature. Survival of the fittest, Yes i just used a darwinian theory to justify cannabilism....get over the outrage you have and listen. For starters i can't be sure but i don't think they were even on British soil, so their courts shouldnt have presidence, this point will make sense in a moment. Secondly, we as evolved humanoids forget a very important part of our make-up, and that is the animalistic part, you can raise your eyebrows and stick your nose as high in the air as you would like to but the fact remains that we are animals, before the age of blackberries and skyscrapers was the age of survival, a time when we did what was necessary for survival, we killed any animal we could including fellow humans when necessary, though many would like to go on acting like we crawled from the primordial ooze with nutri-grain bars and vitamin water. Now i will attest to the fact that we have become much more civilized and sophisticated since then, due to the luxuries we have ascertained through the past couple millenia. Now it is logical to say that in a society such as ours where food is plentiful in many alternate forms that cannabilism is unnecessary and even immoral, and i would be inclined to agree, However that was not the case here. In this case the men were not part of a sophisticated or civilized area, they were on a small island in the middle of the ocean, now as i said before they may or may not have been on british soil, if not then there were no laws,rules, or even a status quo, it was nature in its purely chaotic form. Even IF they were technically on land that had such laws they were still in a situation that didn't afford them the luxuries of a civilized and sophisticated society, nor was there the presence of any solid society, and if you can agree at least to that extent then you must also, logically, admit that with no real society or sophisticated civilization there can be no laws made by that non-existing society, and thus none can be broken. It is an unwritten law that we as humans being of higher intellect and reasoning then our animal brethren will not consume our own for sustenance so long as an alternate option is available, cows, chickens, pigs, etc. The problem here is that they had NO options other than death, and with all do respect to Timeless (who im sure was being as honest as he could be in his current state of mind) i seriously doubt that mostly anyone put in that situation would have acted much differently, i can safely assume that no one here has been on an island for 18 days without proper sustenance, so none of us can be sure of what we are truly capable of. Again i ask you to remember this, we are and will always be nothing more than animals, intelligent and reasonable as we may be, we cannot hide our instincts to survive. Had i been on that jury those men would be free, id even congratulate them on their outstanding moral fiber and strength of will for not having resorted to cannabilism sooner, and for having only killed the one boy, im sure they werent entirely satisfied but nonetheless they didnt succumb to greed and finish eachother off, they did what was necessary and nothing more. I have plenty more points on this, but ill just save those for any rebuddle.

I think, as a general rule, people prove their humanity by sticking to their virtues even when a more brutal, primal, or animalistic solution would create a better result for their person. I suppose it's all about how you rank what's important to you. If you consider pure survival to be the highest goal a person can strive for, then perhaps what you described would be correct. I don't see a point in survival if it would cost me my virtues. It's the crude, common thing to put basic survival ahead of concepts of human dignity and the sanctity of human life, but it's the unusual thing to rise above that. I'd ask myself, what's better? Starve physically for 18 days on some desert island or starve spiritually for the rest of my life?

Originally Posted by timeless

I think, as a general rule, people prove their humanity by sticking to their virtues even when a more brutal, primal, or animalistic solution would create a better result for their person. I suppose it's all about how you rank what's important to you. If you consider pure survival to be the highest goal a person can strive for, then perhaps what you described would be correct. I don't see a point in survival if it would cost me my virtues. It's the crude, common thing to put basic survival ahead of concepts of human dignity and the sanctity of human life, but it's the unusual thing to rise above that. I'd ask myself, what's better? Starve physically for 18 days on some desert island or starve spiritually for the rest of my life?

Yes, and that makes me (personally, if I were in the situation) ask 'the rest of what life?'

If I assume a spiritual life, that changes the scenario. Will I survive in this life if I don't eat this kid? If I don't survive, will it matter in the next life/afterlife - if there is one - that I didn't eat him? Or would I simply be throwing the only life I have away by not eating him?

Originally Posted by sprinkles

Yes, and that makes me (personally, if I were in the situation) ask 'the rest of what life?'

If I assume a spiritual life, that changes the scenario. Will I survive in this life if I don't eat this kid? If I don't survive, will it matter in the next life/afterlife - if there is one - that I didn't eat him? Or would I simply be throwing the only life I have away by not eating him?

It sounds like you'd be throwing his life away against his will for yours.

Originally Posted by timeless

It sounds like you'd be throwing his life away against his will for yours.

Which would be ok if he were an animal and not a human?

Originally Posted by timeless

I'd ask myself, what's better? Starve physically for 18 days on some desert island or starve spiritually for the rest of my life?

The thing of it is, they didn't have that 18 day time frame, they had no idea how long they would be on that island, and that may well have been the most devastating factor in their decision, if they knew they would be rescued they might have been able to hold off

and as for the spiritual aspect, i consider myself a very spiritual individual, with that said i also think spirituality takes a backseat to survival in nearly every case, you see moral structures are man-made, we wrote the rules on whats ok and what isn't ok, but mother nature wrote the rules on survival, we have had that instinct longer than any other.

The fact is a human isn't a divine being, our lives aren't any more important than the lives of the animals we share this earth with, yet each year we slaughter them....why? because we have to, we need meat for proper sustenance [vegatarians are not considered to be in full health since no bean or grain can give them the same protein as meat] in my oppinion the only reason people get so shaky when somebody is murdered is that they themselves are afraid to be next, any moral dilemma is constructed after the fear has shaped somebody's oppinion, and that fear isn't spiritual it is survival.

but none of this morality argument even matters, the question isn't wether or not what they did was morally correct, the question is "was it necessary?" and "should they have gone to prison for this?" to the first question i say yes, and to the second a big resounding NO!