CRM 200 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Hogtie, De Minimis, Reasonable Doubts

• School: Ryerson University
• Department: Criminology
• Course: CRM 200
• Professor: Daniel Alati

Document Summary

Causation: generally related to the determination of whether or not the accused actions have actually caused prohibited act, related to the actus reus. Thin skill rule: take your victim as you find them, principal of causation essentially says: If you engage in some kind of dangerous act against another person and they subsequently die, it does not necessarily matter if they have some sort of preexisting condition that you were unaware of. Sole and operative cause: what the accused does to their victim may not be the only cause of death. The child then died of hypothermia: court declared the purpose of establishing causation; murder can be caused without the direct application of force. The victim died by choking on their own vomit: the accused kicked the victim in the abs resulting in the victim"s death, called a de minimis standard basically a matter of degree of what the accused has.