R v Wallace

Facts

The defendant threw acid at her former partner. He suffered devastating, life-changing injuries from which he was not expected to recover. He later applied for, and underwent, euthanasia in Belgium, and died as a result.

Issue

Whether the decision of the victim to be euthanised was a new intervening act that broke the chain of causation between the acts of the defendant and his death, so that she could not be held to have caused the death for the purposes of murder.

Held

Appeal against the murder conviction dismissed. The acts of the defendant remained an operating and significant cause of death, and the decision to be euthanised did not break the chain.

Ratio

• The acts of the defendant need not be the sole or even the main cause of death; it is enough that they are an operating and significant cause that is more than minimal.
• A later intervening act, including a decision of the victim, breaks the chain only if it is so independent of the acts of the defendant and so potent in causing death that those acts are merely part of the history.
• A decision to end life by lawful euthanasia, taken in response to the very injuries the defendant inflicted, does not in these circumstances make the injuries a mere background; the injuries remain an operating and significant cause of the death.

Key reasoning

• The court treated the question as one of causation in law, applying the established principles that the victim must be taken as found and that the response of the victim to the injuries is relevant only if it is truly independent of them.
• The decision to seek euthanasia flowed directly from the nature and consequences of the injuries; it was not an unrelated act that happened to coincide with them.
• Earlier authority on the free, deliberate and informed intervention of a third party, notably R v Kennedy (No 2) [2007] UKHL 38, did not require a different result because the decision of the victim was a response to the harm caused by the defendant.

Where it fits in the module

This is a Topic 1 case on causation, a core part of the actus reus of result crimes and the main general-part debate about when the conduct of others relieves a defendant of responsibility. It brings together the thin skull style rules on victim vulnerability with the principle that free, deliberate and informed acts of third parties usually break the chain. The tension between respect for the autonomy of the victim and responsibility of the original wrongdoer is the point on which an essay on this case should focus.

Criticisms

• The decision sits uneasily with the principle that a free, deliberate and informed act of another person ordinarily breaks the chain; if the choice of the victim was autonomous, it is hard to see why it should not count as such an act.
• Treating the decision as a consequence of the injuries risks denying the autonomy of the victim, which is at odds with the premise of lawful assisted dying systems that the decision is a genuine personal choice.
• The reasoning gives little guidance on where the line falls, for example if a victim chooses death for reasons only loosely connected to the injuries, so outcomes may depend on the unstated moral judgment of the court.
• The involvement of lawful euthanasia abroad, which would be unlawful in England and Wales, raises the question whether causation should turn on the legal status of the intervening act.