in the previous lesson what we did was explore the concept of causation when it came to the establishment of an Actis Reus for criminal law this lesson we're going to continue talking about this by examining the concept of causation in law exploring the ways in which new intervening causes can contribute to the lessening of criminal sentence in potential um some potential examples of of case law so like I've said we introduced and examined a number of interesting factors which contributes to the issue of caus within the criminal law again we are talking specifically about the act as Reus of an offense the the act itself the guilty act this lesson is going to talk about some of these issues as well continue to talk about it focusing on this idea of of new intervening causes and some basic uh principles which pertain to the causation of harm and the idea is to essentially sum up some of the final issues that relate to causation within criminal law uh before we move on to looking at the rare of an offense which is obviously the other side of the equation the other element that is required for most offenses in criminal law so when we talk about causation you will be met with whether this is talking about causation within the context of the law of thought or within the context of the criminal law or even any other examples but mainly those two are the are the main examples um you'll be faced with this particular Latin phrase this idea of novas Act intervenience what does this essentially mean well the concept and the principle of nervous actus intervenience uh recognizes that in factual circumstances in day-to-day life when it comes to the various different legal matters that exist whether it be Tor or whether it be criminal law there are a multitude of different complexities that pertain to these factual matters there are multiple different causes which may contribute to the resulting harm and so what we talk about there is this idea of new intervening causes novas Actis intervenience now the general rule uh for the whether or not the defendant's liability is a new cause um or contributes to the uh components of compounding damage is that the defendant will be responsible for all of the natural and possible consequences of his or her act so given that there are a number of different consequences that could arise which may be natural or possible um then these are what the defendant may be responsible for it might be easier to just highlight this in a number of different case examples so from 1983 we have the case of crown and padet um in this case um it was a case which essentially examined whether certain acts can be considered to be nervous actors intervenience and the result of which absolve the defendant from liability specifically this was a case of murder the defendant had kidnapped his girlfriend and in a shootout with police officers had used her as a human shield now the the explanation of how this takes place is a very very long explanation um the police officers had very poor visibility for example and a shootout wooden shoe which ultimately leads to the girlfriend being um shot by the police officers when they fired upon this defendant believing it was the defendant and not just the defendant with a human shield the court appeal held that the shot of the officer did not constitute the novas actus intervenience and therefore the the defendant ought to be convicted so it was not a new intervening cause the the shot from the police officer and Lord gof Lord Justice gof stated that there can we consider be no doubt that a reasonable act performed for the purpose of self-preservation uh beny of course in itself an act caused by the accused's own act does not operate as a novice actus intervenience so what we see here is an example of a police officer being accused or at least the defendant was accused of of murder but the police officer was accused of being this new uh intervening cause um the shot from the police officer but it was dismissed on the basis um uh that this could not constitute a a a new intervening cause and therefore it could not absolve the defendant of liability in this case in 2007 we see a similar case of crown versus Kennedy this case examined the nature of a victim's act and whether or not the the the victims act can contribute to the cause of the result and therefore possibly absolve the liability from the defendant um ultimately what happens in this case is the defendant will supply the victim with some class A drugs this was done at the request of the victim as it normally is you don't often have drug dealers just giving victims drugs um they were the the victim asked for some drugs the defendant being a drug dealer or being a supplier had supplied the victim with some class A drugs the victim then self- injected self-administered the drug themselves and would subsequently die as a result of this self- Administration the defendant was convicted of manslaughter and on appeal it was held that the conviction may be overturned owing to the fact that the victim had made their own voluntary and informed decision and it was this voluntary and informed decision which represented a new intervening cause because if you think about it the defendant can supply the victim with some class A drugs and the victim may decide not to inject them or self inject them or may inject a a a lesser amount such that that would lead them to not die as a result so it doesn't necessarily make sense to suggest that the defendant's supplying of the class A drugs was the s was the cause of the death of the particular Victim Because but for that case uh you you could apply the but for test but you could also make the case that the the the victim's drugs uh self- administration of the drugs represented a new intervening cause Okay Lord Bingham stated that the criminal law generally assumes the existence of free will the law recognizes certain exceptions but generally speaking informed adults of sound mind are treated as autonomous beings able to make their own decisions how they will act and none of the exceptions is relied on as possibly appicable in this case ultimately they want they made the argument that the victim's actions represented their own free will their own autonomous decision to self- administer the drug to self-administer the dosage of the drug that they that they did and subsequently die as a result of which and the all of this contributes to the idea that they are new intervening causes let's contrast this case then with the case that we looked at in the previous example the case of Wallace from 2018 because you might think that there might be some similarities even if they resulted in two different convictions one was a qu one was acquitted and one was convicted so so how how do we reconcile these two things because ultimately in the case of Kennedy the victim made the decision to administer the drugs and therefore die and the result of which was that this represents a new intervening cause in the case of Wallace the victim made the decision to go to Belgium to take their own life through Youth and Asia uh but that did not represent a new intervening cause it was not representative of that well the decision to end the victim's own life in the case of Kennedy um or was not a was was sorry a voluntary decision that had no influence by the defendant however in the case of Wallace this decision to end the life of the victim the this self uh this self-confessed decision was not seen as a voluntary decision because it was a decision that was only brought to the to the fry it was only it was only made on the basis of the attack that the defendant had um that had had incurred onto the victim the acid attack which resulted in his decision to go and euthanize himself and so as a result of which this kind of free will autonomous voluntary decision element is what delineates the case of Kennedy and the case of Wallace let's just think about some of the other issues that relates to causation in a tiny bit more detail one of these things is known as the Thin skull rule uh generally this is the rule that states that you have to take the victim as you find them what this essentially suggests is that if the victim of an offense has some unusual condition which may lead to them suffering a significant more harm as a result of the actions of the defendant the defendant cannot just avoid liability on the basis of that particular characteristic so for example if there are there's an example that we see here from Herring which is the idea of a defendant stabbing an individual who is a hemophiliac uh maybe it was the case that the stabbing of the of the individual of the victim uh would not have caused the victim to bleed to death if they weren't hemophiliac they didn't have hemophilia and so the result is that you cannot argue that the that the condition that the victim had was a new intering cause or as a way to break the chain of causation for the defendant's actions if you were for example to hit an individual in the face but it turns out that that individual has some kind of blood clot in their brain and the resulting um attack to that person's head causes that individual to die as a result you cannot argue that you are not responsible for that death because you hit that individual not assuming that they were going to die you take the victim as you find them so the condition of the victim does not um break the chain of causation in that regard finally then let's talk about this 1975 case of crown and U BL or blue um in this case the defendant attacked a woman and had stabbed her the victim was a woman and stabbed her the attack had caused the victim to suffer a pierced lung now when they went to the hospital the victim um the victim actually refused to have a blood transfusion now this blood transfusion would have saved her life and the reason why she refused to have this blood transfusion was owing to her religious beliefs she was a Jehovah's Witness and for those of you who do not know Jehovah's Witnesses do not believe in blood transfusions there are lots of very controversial examples of cases where the parents of Jehovah's Witnesses have tried to refuse hospitals administer administering blood transfusions to their children which may save their lives um ultimately a lot of controversial debate can be had about the religious liberty of an individual versus the life of either their children or themselves whether or not a doctor would have to exceptionally respect the beliefs of this particular individual ultimately U the defendant was convicted of manslaughter because the the victim ultimately would die um and they've appealed on the basis that he argued the refusal to receive a blood transfusion was not only unreasonable but it also broke the of causation okay because if it hadn't have been for the fact that she had a blood transf refus a blood transfusion it would have saved her life the blood transfusion would have um prevented her from dying and the defendant would only have been charged with abh or gbh or some kind of other um uh nonfatal offend because she would have been alive so the idea of a charge for manslaughter uh is suggestive on the fact that it was the defendant that directly caused the attack and the blood transfusion did not represent a new intervening cause or the should I say the refusal of the blood transfusion ultimately the the court argued that the refusal to have the blood transfusion did not constitute a break in the chain of causation and so as a result of which the defendant was not entitled to claim the victim's refusal to get a treatment was a novas actus intervenience now I'm not going to lie this is a very controversial case and the concept of the thin skull rule in this regard and the taking the victim as you as you find them is essentially applied here to religious beliefs whether or not religious beliefs are so fundamental to an individual's characteristics and an individual's life that they represent something like a condition in the same sense that stabbing someone who was who had hemophilia um represents an application of the thin School rule um some people argue that this is this is this does represent a new intervening cause and that religious beliefs should not represent um something that doesn't break the chain of cation some agree with the court of appeal and H on the argument that um the uh defendant should have been um charged with manslaughter and so as a result of which there was no breaking in the chain of causation this is a controversial case so debate it in the comments if you wish