Criminal law and victims who refuse medical treatment

[Douglas Laycock]

        There are no non-artificial distinctions here.  But Eugene's intuitions
about his hypotheticals fit a causation distinction that has been used in
the right to die cases:  that when the doctor withholds treatment, the
patient dies of the disease, but when the doctor gives a lethal injection,
the patient dies of the drug injected.

At 02:09 PM 12/14/1998 -0800, you wrote:
>        I too have no sympathy for the drunk driver who claims that his
>conduct wasn't murder because the Jehovah's Witness victim refused a
>blood transfusion; but the case seems to me a bit more complex than some
>might suggest.
>
>        As I understand it, there is a loose supervening circumstances
>principle afoot in the criminal law:  At a certain point, the actions of
>another, be it the victim or a third party, break the chain of proximate
>causation; the criminal is not held responsible for these indirect
>circumstances.
>
>        Thus, consider example 1:  Criminal C rapes a woman.  She is so
>upset by this that she commits suicide, perhaps because of a (purely
>hypothetical on my part) religious belief that she is tainted and no
>longer deserves to live.  I assume that C would be held liable for rape,
>but not for murder.  (I intentionally chose rape, as an *extremely*
>serious crime, for which I endorse extremely severe punishment; but even
>for such a heinous crime, I take it we would not go further and hold C
>responsible as a murderer for the woman's death if it's genuinely by her
>own hand.)
>
>        Now consider example 2:  Criminal C rapes a woman.  She is so
>upset by this that she stops eating, and dies within several weeks.
>Again, I take it that she wouldn't be liable.
>
>        Finally, consider example 3:  Criminal C rapes a woman.  She is
>mildly injured by this, in an eminently medically reparable way; but
>because she refuses to accept medical treatment (Christian Science) or
>refuses to accept a blood transfusion (Jehovah's Witness), she dies.
>What result?
>
>        It seems to me quite plausible to argue that in example 3, C
>*should* be held liable for murder -- but it seems to me that
>considering examples 1 and 2 before 3 show that this isn't an
>open-and-shut case.  True, there's a distinction that in 1 and possibly
>in 2, the woman seems to will her own death, whereas in 3, she wants to
>live but refuses to accept a certain life-saving procedure; but it's not
>obvious to me, at least at first blush, that this is an obviously
>relevant distinction.
>
>        I am *not* a crim law maven, so perhaps I'm mistaken on the
>likely outcomes of these hypos; I welcome any corrections anyone might
>provide.  (I did, however, check them with a crim law maven colleague of
>mine.)
>
>
>Eugene Volokh, UCLA Law School
>405 Hilgard Ave., L.A., CA 90095
>


Douglas Laycock
University of Texas Law School
727 E. Dean Keeton St.
Austin, TX  78705
        512-232-1341 (phone)
        512-471-6988 (fax)
        dlaycock at mail.law.utexas.edu