R v Kennedy (No 2)

Ratio Decidendi

Facts

Kennedy prepared a dose of heroin, drew it up into a syringe, and handed the syringe to Bosque, an adult of full capacity. Bosque injected himself with the heroin and, shortly afterwards, died from its effects. Kennedy was initially convicted of manslaughter on the basis that he had supplied and helped prepare the fatal dose.

Judgment Summary

The House of Lords quashed Kennedy's conviction for manslaughter. Where a person of full age and sound mind freely and voluntarily chooses to inject themselves with a drug that another has supplied and prepared, that free and informed decision is an autonomous act which breaks the chain of causation between the supplier's conduct and the death. The supplier therefore does not cause the death for the purposes of manslaughter, and cannot be said to have 'administered' the noxious thing to the deceased within s.23 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861 — it was the deceased who administered it to himself. Nor could the supplier be liable as an accessory to the self-injection, because self-injection is not itself a criminal offence. The law respects the autonomy of a responsible adult who makes a voluntary choice to take a drug. Lord Bingham, giving the opinion of the Committee, treated the deceased's self-injection as a voluntary and informed act. Kennedy (No 2) is the definitive authority on causation in drug-supply manslaughter cases.

Key Quotes

Subsequent Treatment