Again Cause in Fact

There is a dispute among criminal law theorists of particularly theoretical bent as to whether a reasonably rigorous and intuitively sound definition can be given of “cause in fact.” I here argue the negative.

Death in the Desert

The desert traveler’s water bottle maliciously tampered with by one malefactor and then stolen by another has bedeviled the jurisprudence of criminal causation since 1929.

Interacting Poisons and Criminal Causation

A recent case note: “United States v. Smith, District Court Denies Oxycodone Distributor's Post-trial Motions in Penalty-Enhancement Case.” 129 Harv. L. Rev. 2297 (June 10, 2016) makes the point that understanding such statutory language as “result” and “causes” in terms of “but for” causation runs into a problem with concurrent sufficient cause cases, what philosophers call “overdetermination.” I want to take a look at some hypothetical poisoning cases, with independently sufficient causes, to pursue some issues of interaction, timing, and the general way to approach hard questions of criminal causation.

With intent to kill, and knowledge of efficaciousness, Badone surreptitiously mixes substance A into Vic’s green tea. Without knowledge of this, Badtoo, with similar intent and knowledge, puts substance B into the cream that Vic used with his tea.