Suppose in an attempt to kill someone, you severely injure them but in a way medically treatable. But due to medical errors, they die on the operating table. Are you still criminally liable for murder?

[u/Syresiv]

Asking because of the Garfield assassination. After he was shot, doctors had the wrong idea of how to treat the wound, and didn't do proper sanitation, leading to his death.

The assassin claimed in this defense that he therefore wasn't responsible for murder. How does this work legally?

[u/saltyferret]

This has happened before, the but for test is generally applied.

[u/Ok_Tie_7564 → u/saltyferret]

In Australia too the "but for" test is the primary statutory and common law rule used to establish factual causation. The test asks whether the victim would have suffered the harm or injury without the defendant's wrongful act.

Royall v The Queen (1991) 172 CLR 378 is a landmark High Court of Australia decision on legal causation in criminal law, holding that an accused can be responsible for a victim's death if their violent conduct forces the victim to take fatal evasive action. The key Issue was whether the accused's actions legally caused the death of the victim who fell to her death while trying to escape him.

The majority applied the "substantial and operating cause" test, confirming that an intervening act by the victim does not break the chain of causation if it was a natural consequence of the threat.

https://jade.io/article/67628

[u/Empty-Way-6980 → u/saltyferret]

There has to be proximate cause as well, which in this case there would be.

[u/ChubtubDaPlaya]

You answered the question in the title. Intent to kill + successful kill =murder (generally)

[u/neverspeakawordagain]

You would 100% be responsible.

An interesting example of this is William Barnes. He shot a police officer in 1966; the officer ended up in a wheelchair and suffered severe health complications as a result of the shooting. Barnes spent 16 years in prison for the shooting and was then released. 41 years later, in 2007, the officer died, and the cause of death was listed by the coroner as complications from the shooting 41 years earlier. Barnes was arrested and charged with murder (although he'd eventually be acquitted, he still spent 3 years in prison while the case was pending).

[u/Fluxcapacitar]

Generally

[u/gottaeatnow]

Yes. This is a murder (or some kind of homicide). In my experience intervening causation is not a defense to murder.

[u/cloudytimes159]

And of course Garfield’s assassin was hung as it was a capital crime.

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