Do you think the right decision was made here?

dudley and stephens 1884..

Dudley Stephens, a guy called Brooks were all able-bodied English seamen, and the deceased an English boy (parker)... between seventeen and eighteen years of age, the crew of an English yacht, a registered English vessel, were cast away in a storm on the high seas..Forced to abandon boat they went overboard in a little raft..

The boat was drifting on the ocean, and was probably more than 1000 miles away from land. On the eighteenth day, when they had been seven days without food and five without water..

Dudley & Stephens conferred with Brooks that Parker was the weaker out of all of them, and that they should kill him and feed off his body..
Brooks gave no consent to this idea.

Soon enough Dudley & Stephens killed the boy, all 3 feasted on his body, drinking his blood..and eating his flesh..

4 days later, all 3 of them nearly dead, they were found..

Back in england Dudley & Stephens were tried for the murder of Parker..
Sentenced to hang..but later it was acquitted by the Queen herself (because of the huge media press on this) to only 6 months in prison..

Do you believe they should have the right to get away with this like they did?

i Don't i believe they should be convicted of murder..

Killing anyone of them was not going to guarantee their safety. They did not know that in 2 minutes, 2 hours, 2 days, 2 weeks, 2 months or even 2 years they could have been rescued. Thus it?s argued that it was not necessary to kill anyone.

To murder someone, you must plead it was in self defence...in this case. there was no self defence as Parker was as no threat to them AT ALL.

It might have seemed like a necessary killing for survival purposes.
BUT it is not excusable or justifiable

i Believe that letting people get away with things like this, opens several MAJOR flood gates...

18 days without food and water? i'd kill my own mum and eat her!
No seriously, i dont think they can be fully accountable for their actions. That amount of time without food or water would do strange things to you.
All you have to think about is that it will be punishment enough that they have to live with waht they done for the rest of thier lives.

on the other hand, they could get the taste for it...

There's no proof consent was or was not given. I don't think they should have been charged. Survival instinct took over.

actually there was, no consent was given as the boy was unconscious at the time they were discussing the situation, plus when he was conscious, they made sure he couldnt listen to what they were saying

Oops I misread that. Then they should have been charged.

It was 125 years ago.. people killed and ate each other all the time back then..

You can't say that you would never eat another human unless you were stuck in that situation. The men involved probably would've never thought of it otherwise and if asked before the incident, would probably say that they would never eat another human.

If stuck in a similar situation i would eat another to survive and so would any other human being for that matter, it all comes down to instincts!

it was survival. Kill one, and save the rest, or let everyone die? I probably would have voted to kill him to. And once you've been out there that long, things in your head get a little whacked - you'd be just a bit off your rocker, so killing and eating someone else might almost make sense.

It's still murder regardless. If Parker had already been dead then they could have been excused but he wasn't. The best they could have hoped for, even in modern times, would be a plea of diminished responsibilty. They were ill, starving, dying and desperate and that would count in their favour and could spare them an execution. But nothing could have made their actions right.

I don't know about English law, but Scots law has always held that you can't legally consent to allowing yourself to harmed. Even getting a tattoo or a piercing is technically assault.

its nearly the same as english law, basically you can give consent to battery, but anything more than that you cant...and you DEFINATLEY can't give consent to murder.

i agree with everything you are saying. In my eyes, it is murder.

Killing anyone of them was not going to guarantee their safety. They did not know that in 2 minutes, 2 hours, 2 days, 2 weeks, 2 months or even 2 years they could have been rescued. Thus it?s argued that it was not necessary to kill anyone.

To murder someone, you must plead it was in self defence...in this case. there was no self defence as Parker was as no threat to them AT ALL.

It might have seemed like a necessary killing for survival purposes.
BUT it is not excusable or justifiable

i Believe that letting people get away with things like this, opens several MAJOR flood gates...

Arguably, it was necessary for survival. If I were stuck on a mountain top with a body and was absolutely starving, I would eat it no matter how disgusted I felt, because I need to survive.

Aside from that, it's murder. I don't think you can deny that it wasn't. Maybe if he had died and then they did what they did... but if they actually killed him, that's murder, flat out.

But see, that's a big part of it. Would this have been any less tragic had they just starved off and died on their own? Personally, I think that it would be more tragic, because 4 lives would have been lost, as opposed to 1. It would have been suicide if they had just allowed themselves to give up like that.

Never having gone that length of time without water, food and probably not much sleep. I can honestly say I don't know what I would be capable of doing.

To be honest, I don't think anyone that hasn't been through that could nor do they have a right to judge anything about what they did because if it were you, would you or wouldn't you?

No one can answer that question HONESTLY!!!!!

It's gross, no doubt. But given the circumstances>>>>>>>>

Yeah, it's a miracle that they even survived that long.

I constintally, and I know this it kinda sick, think about what if my children and I were stranded and starving? I wouldn't be able to watch then wither away and die....... but, what kind of mental damage would it do to them if I started to carve myself up for them to survive......

Like I said, I know it's sick, but, things like that do happen.