The Case of the Shipwrecked Sailors- Prosecution

In the “case of the shipwrecked sailors”, three men were marooned after the sinking of an oil tanker. Subject to extreme conditions and starvation, the men drew lots after about twenty five days and decided that the loser would be killed and eaten as food. When one of the men lost the draw, he pulled out his consent, and the other two men killed him anyway, eating him. Five days later, the remaining two men were rescued and ensuing actions incurred their murder charges. This seems to be a simple case over the battle of life and death, and it truly is. The two men, Dudley and Stephens, made a conscious decision to commit not only the crime of murder, but the atrocity of cannibalism. Crime is crime and law is law- when breaks a law and commits a crime, a punishment must ensue.

First of all, the actions committed by Dudley and Stephens were quite obviously illegal. Though not on the mainland, this court’s jurisdiction falls in the area of the crime at hand. Laws are still laws in our waters. Secondly, the men decided to kill Brooks with the justification that he “was going to die soon anyway” and they should “get it over with”. This type of euthanasia was completely unjustified, based on the fact that Brooks rejected the idea of having the men kill and eat him when his lot was drawn. Though Brooks may have been on his death bed,