## Facts

- Robert Hubbard was arrested for public drunkenness and ordered held in jail until he could be tried.
- As the jailer, R. W. Dyche, and a deputy attempted to incarcerate Hubbard, Hubbard resisted and a scuffle occurred.
- Hubbard did not strike Dyche, and Dyche sustained no physical injury during the struggle.
- Dyche had a serious pre-existing heart condition and had complained of feeling unwell earlier that day.
- After the exertion and excitement associated with restraining Hubbard, Dyche clutched his chest, collapsed, and died shortly thereafter.
- Medical testimony attributed death to acute heart failure and stated that the exertion/excitement of the altercation accelerated or precipitated the fatal event.
- Hubbard was tried after a change of venue and was convicted of voluntary manslaughter.
- Hubbard appealed, arguing the evidence did not establish that his conduct proximately caused Dyche’s death.

## Issues

1. Whether Hubbard’s unlawful resistance to being jailed, without inflicting any physical injury, was the legal or proximate cause of the jailer’s death from a heart attack.
2. Whether a death attributable to a victim’s latent infirmity, precipitated by excitement and exertion during a struggle, is too remote to support a voluntary manslaughter conviction.

## Decision

- The Kentucky Court of Appeals reversed the voluntary manslaughter conviction.
- The court held that Dyche’s death was too remote from Hubbard’s conduct to satisfy criminal proximate causation.
- The court concluded the evidence was insufficient to establish that death or serious bodily harm was a probable and natural consequence of Hubbard’s resistance.

## Legal Principles

- Criminal homicide liability requires proof that death or serious bodily harm was the probable and natural consequence of the defendant’s act.
- Where the defendant’s conduct is indirect (rather than a direct blow, injury, or hostile act), proximate cause turns on whether serious harm is a natural or probable result of that conduct.
- An intervening cause not attributable to the defendant, and without which death would not have occurred, can break the causal chain and preclude homicide liability.
- A victim’s pre-existing condition may affect causation analysis; when the fatal outcome depends primarily on the victim’s frailty and extraordinary reaction to non-injurious conduct, the connection may be legally too remote.

## Conclusion

The court set aside Hubbard’s voluntary manslaughter conviction because, absent any physical injury to the jailer, a fatal heart attack triggered by exertion and excitement during the resistance was not a probable and natural consequence of Hubbard’s conduct and was therefore too remote to constitute proximate cause in criminal homicide.


Hubbard v. Commonwealth, 202 S.W.2d 634 (Ky. Ct. App. 1947)