The defendants appealed against their convictions for murder. They had severely assaulted the victim who later in hospital had ventilator support withdrawn. They asserted that the proximate cause of the death was that act, not theirs.
Held: The appeals failed. The act or omission of a defendant need not be a substantial cause of a criminal result such as death in order to render the defendant guilty of murder. The Court drew the distinction between the ultimate cause of death and what it described as the continuing and operative cause.
The Judge referred to an allegation made by the defendant, if true, as amounting to ‘a most shocking and cynical conspiracy against [the defendant], a dreadful thing’ the allegation being one of extracting a false confession from the defendant. Lord Lane observed: ‘it seems to us that the judge was at the very least entitled to point out to the jury, in clear terms without fudging the issue, the suggestion which was being made against the police; namely that it was a cold, cynical conspiracy to convict an innocent man of murder . . he certainly cannot be criticised for telling the jury in plain terms, without blurring the edges, what it was precisely that the defence was suggesting the police had done.’
Lord Lane CJ
[1981] 1 WLR 690, [1981] 2 All ER 422, CA, (1981) 73 Cr App R 173
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Airedale NHS Trust v Bland HL 4-Feb-1993
Procedures on Withdrawal of Life Support Treatment
The patient had been severely injured in the Hillsborough disaster, and had come to be in a persistent vegetative state (PVS). The doctors sought permission to withdraw medical treatment. The Official Solicitor appealed against an order of the Court . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Updated: 05 August 2021; Ref: scu.180376 br>