Necessity

Where it is considered a necessity to carry out a criminal offence in order to prevent a greater offence from being perpetrated and may be said to form the basis of, by way of illustration, self-defence as a result. But perhaps most famously this defence was rejected in R v. Dudley & Stephens (1884) 14 QBD 273 where a group of ship-wrecked mariners resolved to turn to cannibalism by eating a boy in order to be able to survive long enough to be rescued. However, the defence has still been occasionally recognised in similarly extreme cases including R v. Pommell (1995) Cr App R 607.

 

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