CAUSATION IN ENGLISH CRIMINAL LAW

Causation in English Criminal Law

Causation in English Criminal Law

Introduction

The part of the substantive criminal law commonly called the "special part" consists of several thousand prohibitions and requirements. Criminal codes typically prohibit citizens from doing certain types of action and sometimes (but much less frequently) require citizens to do certain types of actions. Causation enters into both the prohibitions and the requirements of a typical criminal code, for such statutes either prohibit citizens from causing certain results or require them to cause certain results. In either case causation is central to criminal liability. (Beauchamp, 2001)

It is sometimes urged that omission liability (that is, liability for not doing an act required by law) is non-causal, and there is a sense in which this is true. A defendant who omits to do an act the law requires him to do is not liable for having caused the harm that the act omitted would have prevented; rather, he is liable for not preventing the harm. Yet notice that to assess whether a defendant is liable for an omission to prevent some harm, a causal judgment is still necessary: we have to know that no act of the defendant prevented (i.e., caused the absence of) any such harm. For if some act of the defendant did cause the absence of certain harm, then the defendant cannot be said to have omitted to have prevented the harm. One can, for example, only be liable for omitting to save another from drowning if none of one's acts have the causal property, saving-the-other-from drowning). (Colvin, 2004)

Law of self defence

In law the defence of self-defence operates in three spheres. It allows a person to use 'reasonable force' to; defend themselves from an attack or to prevent an attack on another person and to defend his property.

In addition, s3(1) of the Criminal Law Act 1967 provides that:

"A person may use such force as is reasonable in the circumstances in the prevention of crime, or in effecting or assisting in the lawful arrest of offenders or suspected offenders or of persons unlawfully at large."

However, if a defendant uses excessive force this indicates that he acted unreasonably in the circumstances. There will therefore be no valid defence, and the defendant will be liable for the crime.

Automatism applies to the situation where the defendant is not legally insane but because of some external factor he is unable to control what he is doing, or where something was done by the defendant's muscles without the control of his mind, such as a spasm, a reflex action or a convulsion; or an act done by a person who is not conscious of what he is doing, such as an act done whilst suffering from concussion or whilst sleep-walking.

The next sort of defences available is called partial defences. This is when a defendant has caused a victim's death, and has been proved to have had the necessary mens rea for murder; he may be able to avoid a conviction for murder by establishing ...