THE Concurrence Principle

THE CONCURRENCE PRINCIPLE The fault element of a crime must coincide. Fowler v Padget The intent and the act must both concur to constitute a crime. STRICT APPROACH A strict application of the concurrence principle would result in the accused’s acquittal even though it is proven that he or she had intended to kill the victim. Queen Empress v Kahndu Valad Bhavani The appellant struck his father-in-law 3 blows on the head. On his falling senseless, A sought to cover the death by placing firewood under the father-in-law head and set fire to the hut. The medical evidence shows that the death was not caused by the blows and they were unlikely to cause death. Death was caused by the injuries from burning. Held : The blows did not amount to murder. It could not hold that the act of setting fire to the hut by which death was caused was done with such intention or knowledge. It was not the accused had intended by setting fire to make the death of the deceased certain LESS STRICT APPROACH 1. Same transaction approach 2. Causation approach 3. Moral congruence approach Same Transaction Approach Thabo v Mell The appellants acted under a plan to kill V and then make the death look like an accident. They struck V on the head and believing him to be dead, rolled him over a cliff. Medical evidence revealed that the death was caused by exposure to the elements and not the head wounds. The appellants argued that the concurrence principle has not been made since the blows which were intended to kill did not kill and since their acts which did kill were not accompanied by murderous intent since they thought they were handling a corpse. Held : The court rejected the argument and held that it was part of the same transaction, thus the appellants were convicted for murder. Saiful Edham v PP The appellants had inflicted several wounds on V before disposing what they thought was a corpse. The autopsy showed that V was still alive and had died due to drowning. Furthermore her wounds would have bled slowly for hours so as to cause her to lapse into unconsciousness and to appear dead. Held : A series of distinct acts may in some circumstances be regarded as forming part of a larger transaction. The same transaction approach operates equally where fault element was only present during the later part of the transaction. Fagan v Metropolitan Police Commissioner The accused had accidentally drove onto a policeman’s car when he was parking. When he asked to remove the car he refused to do so. Held : There was no mens rea when he accidentally drove onto the policeman’s foot but mens rea was present when the car remained on the foot after he refused to move the car. Actus reus and mens rea did coincide when he refused to move his car later. Causation Approach - Regarding the accused’s initial act as a cause of the victim’s death. - The accused is guilty of the offence charged even though some later act was also found to have been a substantial cause of death. Saiful Edham v PP “... drowning was an additional cause of death superimposed on the neck wounds and not an intervening cause of death. The neck wound would still be an operating cause and substantial cause, and death can properly be said to have resulted from them, where some other cause of death (drowning) was also operating. Moral Congruence Approach - Regarding culpable homicide as established when a person causes death through a series of acts which are morally congruent. - The accused’s earlier culpability may be joined to his or her subsequent conduct on the basis that they share the same moral character. Muhammad Radi v PP The D and V went to vacant teachers’ quarters to engage in sex and drug-taking. A quarrel ensued and D delivered several blows to V’s head with a stick. D concealed her body by pushing it into a tight space under the kitchen ledge. Held : The D’s act of concealing and abandoning the body of the deceased were so intimately connected with his act of striking the deceased that all the acts must be treated as one transaction. R v Le Brun The defendant punched his wife on the chin knocking her unconscious. He did not intend to cause her serious harm. The defendant attempted to move her body, and in the course of so doing dropped her, causing her head to strike the pavement. His wife sustained fractures to the skull that proved fatal. The defendant's appeal against his conviction for manslaughter was dismissed by the Court of Appeal. Lord Lane CJ said: Held : "It seems to us that where the unlawful application of force and the eventual act causing death are parts of the same sequence of events, the same transaction. That is certainly so where the appellant's subsequent actions which caused death, after the initial unlawful blow, are designed to conceal his commission of the original unlawful assault."