Shortly these are the facts of what happened. Arthur was in a gang. He used cannabis regularly and
carried knife for protection. Cannabis made him paranoid, he had frequent psychotic episodes. In
the morning of accidents he smoked cannabis and immediately suffered psychotic episode. He
decided to find local gang and beat them up. Gang – George and Tony. George saw Arthur
approaching and said: “what you doing here you nutter?” Arthur was incensed and swung a punch
but missed George and punched Tony. Tony fell over the bridge, not moving. George run into bus
and was killed instantly. Arthur runs away to Larry’s house to deliver him heroin. Larry asked Arthur
to prepare him a syringe. Arthur gave it to Larry who injected it himself. Larry had convulsion and fell
unconscious. Arthur thought he was dead and set the house on fire and then run away. Passing by
the first scene, by the river he saw Tony, thought he was dead and pushed him back in river. Actually
Tony was alive then, but died from drowning. Larry was found dead.
To advise Arthur for his liabilities we need to identify what exactly happened and how is he liable for
the things that happened. So George, Tony and Larry had died. What kind a homicide was it, how
was it caused and was there any intervenient act to break the chain of causation.
Is Arthur liable for death of Tony? If we look at it in two stages then the first stage would be when
Arthur punched Tony and he fell in the river, and the second stage would be when he pushed him in
the river because he thought that Tony was dead, which caused the actual death. “A cardinal
principle of the criminal law is embodied in the maxim actus non facit reum, nisi mens sit rea – “an
act does not make a man guilty of a crime unless his mind is also guilty”.”1 First we need to define
Arthurs Actus Reus – act of guilt and Mens Rea – mind of guilt. …
