Causation

Question 1

2 Requirements of Causation

Answer 1

Actual Cause

Proximate cause

Question 2

But-for Causation

Answer 2

But-for the defendant’s voluntary act, would the proscribed result /social harm have occurred when it did.?

A given actor must be the actual cause of the result- limits the field of the possible people who could be held responsible. Actual cause doesn’t necessarily hold someone legally responsible. Think of the fact that your mom is the cause for every single thing you’ve done. Doesn’t make her responsible.

Someone is only responsible if they are the actual and proximate cause of death

Hypo: man places poison in wife’s glass by bedside with conscious objective to kill her. Before she drinks, she dies of a heart attack. Is he culpable? Yes not not guilty of murder

Question 3

Result Crime

Answer 3

Any kind of homicide. Act=cause of the result

Question 4

Proximate Cause

Answer 4

that a proximate cause cannot be remote from its putative effect; it must be a direct cause of the effect; it must not involve such abnormality of causal route that is freakish; it cannot be of harms that were unforeseeable to the actor; its connection to the harm cannot be coincidental;