## Facts

- Benjamin Franklin shot a bartender in a San Antonio saloon during an altercation after the bartender slapped him.
- The bullet struck the bartender’s left leg, did not break bone, but cut an artery.
- A physician recommended amputation to prevent infection (“blood poisoning”); the bartender refused.
- The wound became infected, and the bartender died nine days after the shooting from blood poisoning associated with the wound.
- The physician could not state with certainty that amputation would have prevented death; amputations themselves could be fatal, and infection could occur even after amputation.
- Franklin was charged with manslaughter, convicted by a jury, and appealed, arguing the refusal of amputation severed causation.

## Issues

1. Whether a defendant who inflicts a dangerous but not obviously mortal wound can be held criminally responsible for homicide when the victim later dies from infection related to the wound.
2. Whether the victim’s refusal of recommended medical treatment (amputation) constitutes a superseding cause that relieves the defendant of liability for the resulting death.

## Decision

- The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the manslaughter conviction.
- The court held that the shooting remained an operative cause of death and that the victim’s refusal of amputation did not break the causal chain.
- The court rejected the argument that homicide liability requires the wound to be necessarily fatal at the time it is inflicted.

## Legal Principles

- A defendant is criminally responsible for homicide if the inflicted wound is dangerous and materially contributes to death, even when death occurs through complications such as infection rather than immediate trauma.
- A victim’s refusal of medical treatment ordinarily does not constitute an intervening, superseding cause relieving the assailant of liability when the original injury remains a substantial cause of death.
- Uncertainty that the refused treatment would have prevented death supports treating the refusal as a concurring condition rather than an independent cause.

## Conclusion

The court upheld Franklin’s manslaughter conviction because the gunshot wound set in motion the events leading to death, and the bartender’s refusal to undergo recommended amputation did not sever proximate causation where it was not shown that the operation would have certainly prevented death.


Franklin v. State, 51 S.W. 951 (Tex. Crim. App. 1899)