| Source: | All England Reporter |
| Publisher Citation: | [2006] All ER (D) 189 (Jan) |
| Neutral Citation: | [2006] EWCA Crim 17 |
| Court: | Court of Appeal, Criminal Division |
| Judge: | Dyson LJ, Tomlinson and Andrew Smith JJ |
| Representation | Michael Harrison QC and Michelle Colborne (instructed by Yasmin and Shaid) for the first defendant. |
| Gareth Evans QC and Stephen Wood (instructed by Lumb and Megill) for the second defendant. | |
| Paul Watson QC and Simon Myers (instructed by McManus Seddon) for the third defendant. | |
| Simon Myerson QC and Heather Weir (instructed by the Crown Prosecution Service) for the Crown. | |
| Judgment Dates: | 26 January 2006 |
Catchwords
Criminal law - Manslaughter - Causing death by unlawful act - Affray constituting unlawful act - Deceased suffering from undiagnosed heart condition - Deceased running away from affray and subsequently collapsing - Whether affray constituting dangerous act - Whether aggregate of defendants' actions to be taken into account in assessing cause of death - , s 3.
The Case
On settled principles, a person who inflicted quite a slight injury which unforeseeably led to the death of the victim was guilty of the offence of manslaughter and was accordingly criminally liable for the death. However, to hold the defendants in the instant case liable for the death of the deceased in the circumstances such as had occurred (the deceased ran away from an affray and died from a congenital heart condition) would involve an unwarranted extension of the law. Such an extension would come close to saying that if X had committed an unlawful act but for which Y would not have died, X was criminal liable for the death of Y, whereas what was required was that X had committed an unlawful act which was dangerous, in the sense that it was recognised by sober and reasonable persons as subjecting Y to the risk of some physical harm which in turn caused the death.
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