Citation: R v Taber; R v Styman; R v Styman [2002] NSWSC 1239
Court: Supreme Court of New South Wales (Common Law Division)
Date: 11 December 2002
Judge(s): Barr J
Background
Three accused were charged with murder following an attack on a woman in her home. The accused bound and gagged the deceased, leaving her physically unable to move, call for help, eat, or drink. She died of dehydration, estimated at between nine and eleven days after the attack.
After leaving the deceased's home at approximately 4:30 am, one of the accused made a telephone call to emergency services at 4:54 am. The triple-zero operator treated the call as a hoax and did not follow it up. The deceased was never rescued.
The Crown alleged that the accused realised the deceased would probably die if not rescued, and that their failure to take any further steps to secure her rescue constituted the basis for a murder conviction. Each accused moved for a directed verdict of not guilty of murder at the close of the Crown case.
Legal Issues
- Whether an omission to rescue a person deliberately placed in danger can constitute the act causing death (the actus reus) for the purposes of murder by reckless indifference.
- Whether the binding, gagging, and abandonment of the deceased, together with the subsequent failure to secure her rescue, constituted a single continuing transaction rather than a completed act followed by an unrelated omission.
- Whether the mental element (mens rea) and the act causing death (actus reus) need to coexist at precisely the same moment in time to found a murder conviction.
- Whether the accused's unsuccessful attempt to alert the authorities extinguished any continuing duty to remove the deceased from danger.
Decision
Barr J refused to direct a verdict of not guilty of murder. His Honour held that a duty to act can arise in law where a person has deliberately placed another in a position of danger. The accused, having bound and abandoned the deceased in circumstances they knew could cause her death, came under a legal duty to remove her from that danger. Their failure to take any further steps to secure her rescue after the telephone call went unheeded was capable of constituting an omission that caused death.
His Honour accepted that at the time the telephone call was made, the accused genuinely expected the deceased to be rescued and did not then fully contemplate her probable death. He directed the jury accordingly, that if an accused made the call intending or expecting rescue, the jury could not be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the accused then realised she would probably die. However, when the call produced no result, the situation changed. The question for the jury became whether any accused, at any point during the period of omission following the failed call and ending with the death, formed the realisation that the deceased would probably die.
On the question of whether the act and mental element needed to coincide precisely, his Honour found they did not. Drawing on the "single transaction" principle from authorities including Thabo Meli v R and R v Hallett, his Honour treated the entire course of conduct from the attack through to the deceased's death as capable of constituting a single continuous transaction. It was sufficient that the relevant mental state existed at some point during that transaction.
The telephone call did not break the chain of causation. His Honour reasoned that because the call was never acted upon, it had no causal effect on the deceased's death. Nothing interrupted the effect of the original act of abandonment. The only causes of her death remained the acts of those who attacked and abandoned her.
Orders Made
No orders were made in this decision.
Key Takeaways
- A legal duty to rescue can arise where a person has deliberately placed another in danger, and failure to perform that duty is capable of constituting an omission that causes death for the purposes of a murder charge.
- The mental element for murder by reckless indifference does not need to exist at precisely the same moment as the act causing death. It is sufficient that the required state of mind arose at any point during a single continuing transaction encompassing both the original act and the subsequent omission.
- An accused's genuine belief, at the time of an attempted rescue, that the victim would be saved is relevant to whether reckless indifference existed at that moment, but it does not permanently extinguish the legal duty or break the chain of causation.
- Where an attempted rescue produces no result, the chain of causation remains unbroken. The court applied the principle from R v Hallett that unavailing steps taken to avoid consequences, or a mistaken belief that such steps had been taken, do not interrupt causation unless some supervening factor actually prevents the original act from being the cause of death.
- Where a breach of the relevant duty is established, the distinction between murder and manslaughter turns on the accused's state of mind: reckless indifference to probable death points toward murder, while an absence of that mental state may support manslaughter by criminal negligence instead.
Legislation and Cases Referenced
Cases Cited:
- R v Taktak (1988) 14 NSWLR 226
- Thabo Meli & Ors v R [1954] 1 All ER 373
- R v Hallett [1969] SASR 141
- R v Miller [1980] 2 QB 532
- R v Lawford (1993) 61 SASR 542
- People v Beardsley 113 NW 1128 (1907)
- R v Joukhadar, Court of Criminal Appeal, New South Wales, 13 June 1975 (unreported)
- R v Instan [1893] 1 QB 450
- R v Gibbins and Proctor (1918) 13 Cr App R 134
- R v Nicholls (1874) 13 Cox CC 75
- R v Marriott (1838) 8 Car & P 425
- R v Shepherd (1861) Le & Ca 3 147
- R v Conde (1967) 10 Cox CC 547
- R v Lowe (1850) 3 CAR & K 123