Supervening Accidental Causes

generic intent to cause harm, the mere “animus nocendi” is sufficient, the offender being answerable in proportion to the harm which eventually, in fact, ensues. In our law, pre-existing causes which may contribute to make the injury serious, though unknown to the offender, will not diminish his responsibility. It is only supervening accidental causes that induce a reduction of punishment (Section 233).

If all this applies to all grievous bodily harms generally, there is no reason, nor is any one provided by the Code, to make an exception in respect of this particular kind of grievous bodily harm.

Supervening Accidental Causes (La Dottrina delle Con-Cause)

Section 233 lays down that if a supervening accidental cause has contributed to make the injury grievous or aggravated as aforesaid, then the punishment is decreased by one or two degrees.

Although, where a grievous bodily harm has in fact been caused, it is not necessary to prove that the doer had the specific intent to cause that particular degree of harm, it is nevertheless considered that it would be contrary to the dictates of justice to hold the doer responsible for effects which, perhaps, he did not intend and which, in any case, his act would not have produced but for the supervening accidental causes which contributed to make the effects of his act serious. There is not in such case a direct and complete causal connection between the act of the offender and the effects ensuing.

But so that the offender may have this reduction of punishment, it is essential that the contributory causes shall be both supervening, that is to say, arising after the infliction of the harm by the offender, and accidental, that is to say, altogether independent of the act of the offender. Any antecedent disease which may have contributed to make grievous any injury which in a healthy person would not have produced such serious result, will not, therefore, avail the offender. Nor will any circumstance which, though supervening, is connected to the act of the defendant as a consequence thereof.

Cases of supervening accidental contributory causes would he, for instance, the negligence of the doctor attending the patient, or the improper applications to the wound, or the non-observance by the patient of the doctor’s prescriptions. In all such