Rodriguez v. British Columbia (SCC) (1993):
Rodriguez suffered from ALS and wanted assistance in committing suicide if she couldn’t do it herself when the time came. CC241.b prohibited assisted suicide and imposed a 14-year sentence. She wanted to control the circumstances, timing and manner of her death. The SCC found that the Criminal Code provision did infringe upon her right to security but it was not contrary to the principals of fundamental justice. This decision was based on the notion that human life must be respected. The SCC also found that her s.15 rights were infringed but were justified under s.1.
VOLUNTARINESS:
Judicial reasoning follows that there is no criminal liability for involuntary acts. For example, a finding of automatism can result in a finding of no actus reus or mens rea. The SCC has built a voluntariness requirement into the actus reus and has developed significant jurisprudence in the area of automatism and related issues. Rabey defines automatism as “unconscious, involuntary behavior, the state of a person who, though capable of action, is not conscious of what he is doing.” In Parks, La Forest defines automatism as occupying a unique place in our criminal law system…”although spoken as a defense, it is conceptually a subset of the voluntariness requirement, which in turn is part of the actus reus component of criminal liability.” Not all offences require mens rea. Some require a reduced element of fault, while others, such as regulatory offences, maintain no elements of fault. The danger inherent in using the term “automatism” is that it is a legal term that carries with it medical connotations. This was seen in Stone, in which voluntariness becomes blurred with the defense of insanity. In cases involving an epileptic seizure or spasm, volition is not present.
HLA Hart “Acts of Wills and Responsibility”
“Involuntary conduct involves a defect much more basic than a mere lack of awareness of circumstances or consequences involving an inability to control actions.” This approach has not been accepted because it would threaten to widen the exemption afforded in present law.
CAUSATION:
Most CC offences require that the actus reus must cause certain consequences. The CC contains no special principles regarding causation. Proximate cause is a search for the conditions immediately antecedent to and cocomitant with the effect. There is a distinction at law between proximate and remote causes. The Crown will be required to prove both factual and legal causation beyond reasonable doubt. Canadian criminal law takes an unstrict approach to causation and allows a person to be held liable for causing consequences – even if those consequences are caused in part by the victims peculiar and perhaps unforeseeable vulnerabilities.
R. v. Michael (1840) Eng.
A woman was charged with the willful murder of her son after she gave a bottle of deadly poison to the child’s nanny with the intention that she should administer it to the child. The nanny was simply an “unconscious agent” and the mother was the imputed murderer of the child.
Smithers v. R (1978) SCC
This case involved a rough hockey game that culminated in the ejection of the accused and deceased. The accused made threats that he was going to get the deceased. After the game, the accused approached the deceased, punched him, then kicked him hard in the stomach, causing the deceased to gasp for air and die. The act was unlawful, self defense did not apply and the issue was whether the accused caused the death. The issue of causation is for the jury, not the experts or the judge. A malfunctioning epiglottis in part caused the death; however, the thin skull doctrine applies in the criminal context too. The kick was “at least a contributing cause of death outside the de minimus range.” Three important determinations derived from this decision:
1. The factual determination of causation is to be made by the trier of fact by considering all evidence, both expert and lay;
2. The accused’s act need merely be a contributing cause outside the de minimus range;
3. A well recognized principal in tort – one who assaults another must take the victim as they are found…thin skull.
R. v. Blaue (1975) CA
The accused entered the deceased’s house and asked for sex. She refused. He stabbed her four times, once piercing her lung. She lost much blood but refused to undergo a blood transfusion at the hospital due to her faith as a Jehovah’s Witness. She would not have died had she taken the blood. The accused argued that he didn’t cause the victim’s death. Rather, he claimed that her death resulted from her refusal to take the transfusion.
R. v. F.(D.L.) (1989) Alta. CA
The accused was charged with dangerous driving under CC249.1, which resulted in injury to a pedestrian. At trial, the judge found that it was the accused’s failure to see the jaywalker rather than the dangerous driving that caused the injury. Under this section, the driving must demonstrably influence the actual injury accident beyond serving as its backdrop. The distinction would not be a real issue in the majority of prosecutions but in cases involving parallel or competing causes of an injury accident, one of which may be quite external to the conduct of the accused, it can arise. The offence was proven based on the fact that the driver should have seen the complainant. McClung saw the Smithers test as too lax and comes to the conclusion that the impugned cause must be real and truly contributing to the injury.
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