Core Principles Flashcards
What are the key elements of criminal liability?
Criminal liability = Actus reus + Mens rea + Absence of a valid defence
What are the four types of actus reus?
- Conduct
- Result
- Circumstances
- Omissions
What are conduct offences?
In some cases, offences will only require certain acts to have been committed by the defendant to satisfy the actus reus.
E.g. Fraud by false representation - only the conduct of making the false representation is required, it does not matter that the victim is actually deceived by the representation.
Blackmail
Theft
What are result offences?
The actus reus of result crimes require more than just the defendant’s action. Here, the action must lead to a specified consequence. In such cases it must be proved that the action actually caused result.
E.g. murder, manslaughter, criminal damage, assault occasioning actual bodily harm
What are circumstance offences?
The actus reus can also include the need for some particular surrounding circumstance.
E.g. theft - the surrounding circumstance the prosecution must prove is that the property belonged to someone other than the thief.
Actus reus: omissions
A defendant can be held to have committed the actus reus of an offence despite taking no action at all. Although the general rule that there is no liability for failure to act, the criminal law will, in certain circumstances, impose a legal obligation to act which if breached could result in criminal liability.
What are the two aspects to causation?
Factual Causation: the jury must be satisfied that the acts or omissions of the accused were in fact the cause of the relevant consequence
Legal Causation: it must be established that the acts or omissions of the accused were a legal cause of that consequence
What is the test for factual causation?
The ‘but for’ test.
Factually it must be proved that ‘but for’ the acts or omissions of the accused, the relevant consequence would not have occurred in the way that it did.
In other words, if you eliminate the act of the defendant would the prohibited harm have occurred anyway?
Note: any action which accelerates death is cause e.g. throwing a terminally ill person down the stairs would still be murder
What is legal causation?
The law checks the culpability of the defendant before imposing liability and it will require that the defendant is the ‘operating and substantial’ cause of the prohibited consequence.
- The defendant’s act must be the substantial cause of the prohibited harm
- The consequence must be caused by the defendant’s culpable act
- The defendant’s act need not be the only cause of the prohibited consequence: where there are multiple causes it must be more than de minimis
What are intervening acts (and what are they)?
An intervening act is a subsequent event or act of either the victim or a third party which renders the defendant’s part in the consequence very small, breaking the chain of causation and meaning that the defendant is not criminally liable.
- Medical negligence
- Acts of third parties
- Acts of the victim
- Thin Skull rule
- natural events
Intervening acts: Medical Negligence
Courts are reluctant to allow medical malpractice to break the chain.
Will not break the chain if the original wound is still an operating and substantial cause of death. The second cause must be so overwhelming as to make the original wound merely part of the history.
Must be so independent and itself so potent in causing death that they regard the contribution made by his acts as significant.
Intervening acts: Acts of third parties
Actions of third parties must be free, deliberate and informed to break the chain of causation.
E.g. police returning fire is not free nor deliberate
Intervening acts: acts of the victim
Three types:
- fright and flight cases
- refusing medical treatment
- suicide
Acts of the victim: fright and flight
Is it foreseeable (to a reasonable person) as to whether the victim might try to escape from the attack or threat? If yes, held responsible, if not = breaks the chain.
Also ask: was the victims conduct proportionate to the threat? (within the ambit of reasonableness)
E.g.
- guilty for injuries that were the result of jumping out of a car to get away from unwanted sexual advances
- jumping out of a moving vehicle after being threatened at knife point
Acts of the victim: refusing medical treatment
- Refusing medical treatment on religious grounds will not be an intervening act (eg blood transfusion) - whole in person in both mind and body
- Does not matter if the wound is instantly mortal, still guilty where wound became infected and the defendant refused amputation and died.
- if died from same injuries even after they had been stitched up and the reopened later - still guilty.
Acts of victim: suicide
Victim’s suicide is unlikely to break the chain of causation and the defendant is still likely to be the legal cause if:
- dies from original wound
- the act was reasonably foreseeable (causes brilliant pianist to lose her fingers, or keen sportsman to be paralysed)
- D’s unlawful act was a significant and operating cause of death and at the time of the attack it was reasonably foreseeable that the victim would die by suicide as a result of V’s injuries.
May break the chain where:
- injuries inflicted have healed
- it was a voluntary and informed decision of the victim to act (a person who supplies drugs to another has not caused that drug to be administered when the other injects it.
Intervening acts: think skull rule
Provides that a person who inflicts harm on another cannot escape liability if the victim owing to some pre-existing infirmity or peculiarity suffers greater harm than would have been expected as a result of what the accused has done.
Defendant must take the victim as they find them.
