Causation The rules of causation are applied to decide whether the defendant’s guilty act caused the required consequence of the crime. The defendant’s actions must have caused the consequence; if not there is no criminal liability. There are two types of causation, which are: factual causation and legal causation. With factual causation the defendant can only be guilty if the consequence would not have happened ‘but for’ the defendants actions. This can be seen in ‘R v White’ where White put poison cyanide in his mother’s drink intending to kill her, but she died due to a heart attack. Another way of looking at this is if the consequence would not have happened if the defendant had not acted. In ‘R v Pagett’ the defendant used his girlfriend as a human shield while he shot at armed police, they returned the fire and the woman died. Pagett was guilty of manslaughter as she would not have died but for his actions. Once there is a factual cause there must be a legal cause. This is so that the defendant can only be convicted if he is guilty. The link between the act and the consequence is the chain of causation, and must not be broken if there is to be criminal liability. The operating and substantial cause is the key for legal causation and has several different aspects to consider. One is that the original injury must be the operating and substantial cause. This can be shown in ‘R v Jordan’ where the victim was stabbed, a week later fully recovered and then received an injection from the doctors that killed him and, ‘R v Jordan’ where two soldiers were fighting and one got killed but the defendant argued that the chain of causation between the stabbing and death had been broken by the way the victim was treated. It can also be seen in ‘R v Cheshire’ where the actual cause of the death was not seen as an independent of the original act, so there was legal causation. Sometimes the sole cause of the death or injury seems to be a completely independent act; known as an intervening act. This can be seen in ‘R v Malcherek’ where the doctors switched off the life support machine of the victim, however it did not break the chain of causation. Another aspect is to take your victim as you find him, where the law does not take into account the characteristics of the victim. In ‘R v Blaue’ the victim’s religious beliefs led to the refusal of life saving treatment.