Criminal Law

R v. Kennedy (No. 2)

[2007] UKHL 38

Facts

Kennedy and Marco Bosque were together in a hostel.
Bosque asked Kennedy for heroin.
Kennedy prepared a syringe containing heroin.
He handed the filled syringe to Bosque.
Bosque was an adult who understood the nature of heroin and voluntarily injected himself.
Kennedy did not physically inject the drug into Bosque.
Bosque later died from the effects of the heroin.
Kennedy was prosecuted for unlawful-act manslaughter.
The prosecution argued that supplying and preparing the heroin caused Bosque’s death.
The case reached the House of Lords to determine whether a supplier causes death where a fully informed adult freely administers the drug to himself.

Whether Kennedy legally caused Bosque’s death.
Whether Bosque’s voluntary and informed self-injection broke the chain of causation.
Whether preparing and handing over the syringe amounted to administering the drug.

Unlawful-act manslaughter requires:
an unlawful act;
objective dangerousness;
causation of death.
A free, deliberate and informed act by a responsible adult ordinarily breaks the chain between another person’s earlier conduct and the final prohibited consequence.
A person supplies a drug where he makes it available to another.
A person administers a drug where he directly causes it to enter the recipient’s body.
Merely preparing a syringe and handing it to another person does not amount to administration where that person freely injects himself.
Criminal responsibility for drug supply does not automatically establish responsibility for the user’s death.

Kennedy unquestionably participated in unlawful drug activity.
He obtained or possessed the heroin, prepared the syringe and supplied it to Bosque.
Those acts could support drug-related offences.
The separate manslaughter charge, however, required proof that Kennedy caused the ingestion that led to death.
Bosque was not:
a child;
deceived about the substance;
forced to inject;
physically injected by Kennedy;
incapable of making his own decision.
He freely chose to take the syringe and inject himself.
The final act that introduced the heroin into his bloodstream was therefore Bosque’s own autonomous act.
The House of Lords held that personal autonomy matters in criminal causation.
Where an informed adult deliberately acts upon himself, the law ordinarily treats him as responsible for that immediate act.
Kennedy’s supply created an opportunity and was a factual condition of the death, but factual contribution alone was not enough.
Legal causation required a sufficiently direct attribution of the administration to Kennedy.
He had not used Bosque as an innocent instrument.
Nor could he be treated as a joint principal in Bosque’s self-administration, because the law did not criminalise Bosque’s act of self-injection in a manner capable of creating that joint liability.
Kennedy’s conduct was blameworthy, but it was not legally the act causing death for unlawful-act manslaughter.

The House of Lords held that Bosque’s voluntary, deliberate and informed self-injection broke the chain of causation.
Kennedy supplied the heroin but did not administer it.
His conviction for unlawful-act manslaughter was quashed.
The judgment does not provide immunity for drug suppliers; it separates liability for supply from liability for a death caused by an autonomous adult’s act.
Use this case for: a fully informed adult’s voluntary self-administration of drugs may break the chain of causation between the supplier and the resulting death.