## Facts

- Randy L. Brackett, age 21, entered the home of Elizabeth Winslow, an 85-year-old widow for whom he had previously done yard work.
- During the night, Brackett raped Winslow, choked and severely beat her, and forced her to write him a $125 check; he ate food in the home and later left in the early morning.
- Police found Winslow naked, severely bruised, and reporting she had been raped, choked, and beaten; hospital examination revealed, among other injuries, a broken arm and a broken rib.
- Winslow was hospitalized for about three weeks and declined physically and mentally, becoming depressed, resisting eating, and weakening.
- Because she could not swallow, she was transferred to a nursing home; a nasogastric feeding tube was ordered but could not be inserted due to her condition and injuries.
- While being fed small amounts of pureed food at the nursing home, Winslow aspirated food, asphyxiated, and died about five weeks after the assault.
- Autopsy evidence attributed the aspiration/asphyxiation to an inability to clear the airway, explained in part by pain and impaired breathing associated with the broken rib.

## Issues

1. Whether Brackett could be convicted of murder under Illinois felony-murder principles where the victim died weeks later from aspiration/asphyxiation during feeding in a nursing home.
2. Whether the victim’s later death was too remote, accidental, or interrupted by intervening medical care to establish proximate causation.
3. Whether lack of intent to kill and lack of foresight of the precise manner of death defeated murder liability.

## Decision

- The Illinois Supreme Court affirmed the appellate court’s judgment upholding Brackett’s murder conviction and extended-term 60-year sentence.
- The court held the evidence supported that Brackett’s rape and beating were a contributing proximate cause of Winslow’s death.
- The court rejected arguments that medical treatment or nursing-home feeding constituted an independent superseding cause.
- The court held felony-murder did not require proof of an intent to kill or that Brackett foresaw the precise mechanism of death.

## Legal Principles

- For homicide liability, the defendant’s conduct need not be the sole or immediate cause of death; it is enough that it is a contributing cause that proximately results in death.
- Proximate cause in felony-murder turns on whether the death is sufficiently connected to the felony and not so extraordinary or attenuated as to break the causal chain.
- Ordinary medical treatment and caregiving responses to injuries caused by the defendant generally do not sever causation unless they are abnormal and independent of the defendant’s acts.
- Under felony-murder, the intent to commit the underlying felony supplies the malice element; the State need not prove intent to kill.
- Foreseeability does not require anticipation of the exact manner of death; it is enough that death is a foreseeable result of violent felonious conduct.
- A defendant takes the victim as found; a victim’s age or frailty does not relieve the defendant of liability for the actual consequences of inflicted injuries.

## Conclusion

Because Brackett’s violent felonies set in motion a chain of events leading to Winslow’s death and the later medical and nursing-home care was a foreseeable response rather than an independent cause, the court held the causal connection sufficient for felony-murder and affirmed the murder conviction and sentence.


People v. Brackett, 510 N.E.2d 877 (Ill. 1987)