In criminal law, the illegal act of the defendant must have caused the victim’s injury or death without anything ‘breaking the chain of causation’. One way to break this chain is with a new and voluntary act of the victim or a third party which becomes the main cause of injury or death – a novus actus interveniens. This was the decision in R v Kennedy [2007] UKHL 38. The defendant prepared a syringe of heroin for the victim who voluntarily injected himself, and then died afterwards. The defendant was found not guilty of unlawful act manslaughter because of the victim’s free and informed decision to take the heroin.
R v Blaue is interesting because the ‘act’ of the victim was to refuse the blood transfusion she would normally have received for stab wounds, because her religion forbade it. This refusal caused her to die from her wounds, when she would have survived. Did this mean she caused her own death by refusing medical care?
The judge said that those “who use violence on others must take their victims as they find them”, meaning the defendant could not complain that an important part of the victim’s identity (her religion) meant that the injury affected her more than it would other people because she would not be treated. The stabbing was still an operative cause of her death so he was found guilty.