We believe that the doctrine of necessity does not justify the act of killing Whetmore.

It is crystal
clear that the Speluncean survivors murdered Whetmore. All four of them took advantage of their
superior strength outnumbering Whetmore and undoubtedly synced their minds agreeing to willfully
and unlawfully kill him. Their intention to kill was brought about by starvation and the necessity to live
and survive but this is not enough to justify their act of killing for there was no sufficient case of
necessity to kill.

In the case of US v Holmes, Justice Baldwin said:

It is the law of necessity alone which can disarm the vindicatory justice of the country. Where, indeed, a
case does arise, embraced by this“law of necessity,” the penal laws pass over such case in silence; for law is
made to meet but the ordinary exigencies of life. But the case does not become “a case of necessity,” unless all
ordinary means of self preservation have been exhausted. The peril must be instant, overwhelming, leaving no
alternative but to lose our own life, or to take the life of another person. An illustration of this principle
occurs in the ordinary case of self-defense against lawless violence, aiming at the destruction of life, or
designing to inflict grievous injury to the person; and within this range may fall the taking of life under other
circumstances where the act is indispensably requisite to self existence.

In another precedence case, Commonwealth v Valjean in which the court did not accept the
justification of hunger and almost starvation for a person accused of theft (as a cause to steal
food).How could killing and eating a man be justified on similar basis - If the court can convict a thief
on the charge of theft expecting him to starve to death then how can the court not convict the 4 accused
on the charge of murder because they were going to starve to death.
It is argued that in the above case, the doctrine of necessity is not applicable due to the fact that the
thief could have negotiated with the grocer,or looked for a job, or sought public or private charity. In
short, the thief resorted to stealing without exhausting all his or her options first.

In the case at bar, we argue that the evidence fell short of what was required by the doctrine of
necessity. Indeed there is a necessity to live and survive but no sufficient case of necessity to kill.
Hence, the accused did not exhaust all their options before resorting to killing Whetmore.

We anchor this argument on 2 grounds:

First, The physician stated that there is little possibility to survive-- little does not immediately
constitute the impossibility of survival. Possibilities always exist and existed even for Whetmore.
Besides, they still had rations left on the 20th day, they could have utilized the remaining rations they
had.

Second, They could have employed other means rather than resorting to murder, such as amputating
their limbs.

The dangers of accepting necessity as a defense:

Using necessity as an excuse would gradually weaken the system, allowing the defense would
encourage people to overrate the danger to which they are exposed and yield quickly to temptation.
Moreover, necessity provides limited justification by just making the act morally permissible but will
not ensure that the act is the best possible option to carry out in a certain circumstance.

If we take necessity as a defense, then surely everyone can conjure up their own meaning of the
word. To save us all the trouble, if we were to take the opinions of Justice Foster and Justice Handy, we
might as well just declare that Newgarth is now a lawless jungle.