magpie wrote on Dec 13^th, 2012 at 4:42pm:

Sounds like you also like a Pole up ya. Karnal wants to hear from you. He is our resident Pole dancer, so to speak.

magpie wrote on Dec 14^th, 2012 at 8:16am:



feathered friend , that picture looks like one of those dolls old ladies put on their toilet rolls in the duuny

Your Honour, I now assert the legal principles under which charges against the taser-happy police officers will be assessed.

Homicide is the killing of a human being by a human being. The different categories of homicide, eg murder, manslaughter and infanticide, all have the following points in common:

1. Unlawful killing:The killing must be unlawful. Certain defences, eg self-defence, will make a killing lawful.The killing must be of a living human being.
2. Human being: The defendant must be proved to have caused the victim's death (although the defendant's act need not be the sole or the main cause of death).
3. Two matters need to be considered: did the defendant in fact cause the victim's death, and if so, can he be held to have caused it in law? Further problems may arise where, after the defendant has inflicted an injury on the victim, some other act or event intervenes before death; or where the defendant receives negligent medical treatment. The victim may also die attempting to escape from the defendant.
4. Causation in fact: R v White [1910] 2 KB 124. The defendant placed poison in a glass containing his mother's drink. She drank the contents of the glass, but died of heart failure before the poison could take effect. The defendant was charged with murder but convicted of attempted murder. With regard to causation in fact, the defendant's act in placing poison in his mother's drink did not in any way cause her death. If one were to ask, "But for the defendant's act would his mother have died?", the answer would obviously have to be yes; she would have died anyway, thus disproving causation in fact.
5. Causation in law:R. v. Smith (Thomas Joseph) [1959] 2 QB 35, [1959] A.C. is an English criminal law case, dealing with causation and homicide. The court ruled that negligence of medical staff does not break the chain of causation in murder cases.

Now, so issues arise as to which of the officers caused the death (multiple taser shots, 14). Which leads us into problems with causation, such as intervening acts or events.
Sometimes, after the defendant's act, there is an intervening act or event before the death occurs which contributes to the death. We must therefore consider the legal effect of an intervening act.
The defendant is not responsible for the death where the victim dies as a result of some subsequent act, unconnected with the defendant's act, which would have caused the death on its own even if the defendant had not inflicted the original injury on the victim. However, not every intervening act will relieve the defendant from liability for the subsequent death. There are three different grounds on which the defendant might still be held to have caused the death:
a) Combination of causes
If the death is caused by a combination of two causes, and the defendant's act remains "an operating and a substantial cause", then the defendant will still be liable.
R v Malcherek (1981) 73 Cr App R 173. The defendant attacked a woman causing injuries that were so severe that the victim had to be placed on a life support machine. Doctors decided to switch off the machine after determining that the victim was "brain dead" and that there was no prospect of recovery. Half an hour later the victim was pronounced dead. The defendant was convicted of murder and appealed on the ground that the doctors had broken the chain of causation between the defendant's attack and the death of the victim by deliberately switching off the life support machine. The Court of Appeal held, dismissing the appeal, that the operating and substantial cause of death had been the original wounds inflicted by the defendant. The effect of the life support machine was merely to hold the effect of the injuries in suspension; as soon as the machine was switched off the original wounds continued to cause the death of the victim, even if death followed within seconds of the machine's disconnection.
b). Natural consequences of the Defendant's act
The victim may die as the result of some act or event which would not have occurred but for the act done by the defendant and which is a natural consequence of the defendant's act - that is, it was foreseeable as likely to occur in the normal course of events. In such a case, the defendant will still be held to have caused the death.
For example, a man is attacked and left lying in the road. The attacker will be responsible for the death if the man dies from loss of blood, exposure, an infection of the wounds, or if he is run over by a car. However, the defendant would not be liable if the man was struck by lightening, killed by another assailant or killed by a collapsing building during an earthquake.
Human intervention, where it consists in a foreseeable act instinctively done for the purposes of self-preservation, or in the execution of a legal duty, does not break the chain of causation:
R v Pagett (1983) 76 Cr App R 279. The defendant, to resist lawful arrest, held a girl in front of him as a shield and shot at armed policemen. The police instinctively fired back and killed the girl. The Court of Appeal held that the defendant's act had caused the death and that the reasonable actions of a third party by way of self-defence could not be regarded as a novus actus interveniens (new act intervening). The defendant had caused the death as the intervening act had been a foreseeable consequence of his action and had not broken the chain of causation. The defendant was liable for manslaughter, and:
c). Characteristic of the victim
If the intervening act is a characteristic of the victim then it does not have to be foreseeable and will not break the chain of causation. The "Thin Skull" Rule, which provides that a defendant must take his victim as he finds him, will apply. That is, if D hits V on the head with the degree of force that would usually cause nothing more than slight bruising, but because V has an unusually thin skull causes V to suffer a fractured skull and brain damage, D cannot rely on evidence of V's physical shortcomings to show the chain of causation has been broken. For example:

sanofi , you must be a law student

go and get a job shooting puppies .

its more respected by the community.

... wrote on Dec 14^th, 2012 at 2:35pm:

That’s all wonderful stuff – perhaps you should have prosecuted the crown bouncers?

FriYAY wrote on Dec 14^th, 2012 at 2:52pm:

That's where the forensics, witnesses,  and the police come into it. Which will unfold in due course.

I should be done by March  or April 2013, if all the technical reports are in.

sanofi wrote on Dec 14^th, 2012 at 2:58pm:


hearing is adjourned until April 2013.