LWZ114 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Blood Transfusion, Breaking The Chain, Well-Founded Relation
HOMICIDE, MURDER, PROVOCATION & INVOLUNTARY MANSLAUGHTER
HOMICIDE – Physical Element
❖ Homicide is the unlawful killing of a human being, which includes murder and manslaughter.
❖ Physical element is conduct that causes death of a human being.
The victim must have been a human being
❖ Common law test
➢ R v Hutty: A person is not legally in being until he or she is fully born in a living state. ‘Fully born’ means that
the child is fully extruded from its mother’s body and is living by virtue of its own organs.
❖ R v Martin: An accused who inflicts injury to a foetus who is later born alive but subsequently dies from those
injuries, may be guilty of murder or manslaughter, if the accused had the fault element at the time of the injury.
The victim must be dead
❖ Death (Definition) Act 1983 (SA) s2: A person has died when there is
➢ (a) irreversible cessation of all function of the person’s brain; or
➢ (b) irreversible cessation of circulation of blood in the person’s body.
❖ Those in a PVS have some function in the brain stem → not considered dead.
➢ Airedale v Bland: Unnecessary to keep such patients alive artificially.
Causation
❖ Campbell v R: Causation is a question of fact for the jury, who are expected to apply their common sense in
determining whether an accused’s conduct caused the victim’s death.
❖ Substantial cause test
➢ R v Hallett: Whether the act consciously performed by the accused is so connected with the event that it must be
regarded as having a sufficiently substantial causal effect – which subsisted up to the happening of the event,
without being sufficiently interrupted by some other act or event.
▪ *D beat V to unconsciousness and left him lying on the beach in a position of apparent safety.
▪ *Tide came in, and V died from drowning rather than the injuries.
▪ D’s blow started the chain of events which led to the victim drowning + tide did not break chain of causation
→ it was a substantial cause of death.
▪ Ask: At the time of death, was the accused’s act still an operating and substantial cause of death? Irrelevant
that another cause was also operating.
➢ R v Pagett: Accused’s conduct need not be the sole nor major cause of death.
➢ Royall v R: There may be several causes, and more than 1 person may be criminally responsible for the death.
❖ Natural consequence test: Where victim’s escape contributed to his/her death.
➢ Royall v R (majority)
▪ Injury is caused by the accused’s conduct if:
• the accused’s conduct induces in the victim a well-founded (objective) apprehension of physical harm,
and
• the victim’s escape was a natural consequence of the apprehension, and
• the victim is injured in the course of escaping.
▪ Mason CJ: The victim’s chosen mode of escape need not be reasonable, because a victim in fear of his/her
own life is not expected to always make a sound or sensible judgement, and may act irrationally.
▪ Mason CJ: If the accused intended injury to result in the way in which it did (eg. knowledge of phobia), then
causation is more easily established.
▪ Immediate cause of death need not be foreseeable for D’s act to be a substantial cause of death.
Novus Actus Interveniens
Acts of nature
❖ Hallett v R: The ordinary operation of natural causes (eg. the tide coming in) does not break the chain of causation.
Acts of victim or third parties
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