R v Blaue

Ratio Decidendi

Facts

Blaue went to the home of a young woman and, when she rejected his sexual advances, stabbed her four times, piercing a lung. At hospital she was told she would die without a blood transfusion, but as a Jehovah's Witness she refused the transfusion on religious grounds, and she died. Blaue argued that her refusal of the life-saving treatment, rather than his stabbing, was the cause of death.

Judgment Summary

The Court of Appeal upheld Blaue's conviction for manslaughter (his defence of diminished responsibility having reduced the murder charge). It held that the victim's refusal of the blood transfusion on religious grounds did not break the chain of causation. The stab wound remained an operating and substantial cause of death, and the principle that a wrongdoer must 'take his victim as he finds him' applies not only to the victim's physical characteristics (the thin-skull rule) but to the whole person, including their religious beliefs. It was not for the defendant, or the court, to say that the victim's refusal of treatment was unreasonable; the question was simply what caused the death, and the answer was the stab wound. Lawton LJ rejected the argument that the victim's decision was an unreasonable intervening act. Blaue is the definitive authority that the thin-skull principle extends to a victim's beliefs and choices about medical treatment in criminal causation.

Key Quotes

Subsequent Treatment