CRM/LAW C144 Chapter Notes - Chapter ROOT and MATOS: Manslaughter, Wwe Network, Headon

• School: UC-Irvine
• Department: Criminology, Law and Society
• Course: CRM/LAW C144
• Professor: Meeker

Document Summary

The appellant was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter for the death of his competitor in the course of an automobile race between them on a highway. The want of any rational basis for the use of proximate cause in determining criminal liability can no longer be properly disregarded: first borrowed from the field of tort law. The defendant"s reckless conduct was not a sufficiently direct cause of the competing driver"s death to make him criminally liable therefor. Underlying facts, the actual crime that took place. Defendant, running from the scene of an armed robbery he had just committed, climbed a ladder to the roof of a building and fled in the dark across the manhattan rooftops. The police officer chasing him fell down an air shaft and plunged 25 feet to his death. New york court of appeals upheld a conviction for felony murder.