Reconceptualising The Role of Actual Causation in Criminal Law

This article examines two important themes arising from several recent Court of Appeal decisions concerning causation in criminal law. The first theme analysed will be the issue of factual causation in cases where the free, deliberate, and informed act rule is relevant. The second interrelated theme that will be analysed is the requirement not to look to prove factual causation in cases where V has died because D failed to take an opportunity to prevent what was causing V’s death from continuing to cause V’s death. In such cases the duty to act is used to ground liability and thus causal indeterminacy does not allow D to evade criminal liability.