## Facts

- Anthony Flenon left a Detroit house early March 21, 1970, carrying a shotgun intending to “get back” at someone.
- He approached a group of people, who dispersed upon seeing the gun; he chased Carl Johnson, cornered him behind a parked car, and shot him in the upper leg.
- Johnson underwent an above-the-knee amputation due to the severity of the wound and received extensive blood transfusions.
- After discharge, Johnson weakened, was readmitted to the hospital, and died.
- Medical testimony identified the cause of death as serum hepatitis and pneumonia; the hepatitis was linked to transfusions, and exposure to hepatitis was effectively certain given the volume transfused, though death after exposure was statistically uncommon.
- Flenon was charged with first-degree murder under Michigan law, convicted by a jury, and sentenced to life imprisonment.

## Issues

1. Whether the evidence supported a finding of a reasonable and direct causal connection between the gunshot wound and Johnson’s death from serum hepatitis and pneumonia.
2. Whether serum hepatitis contracted through transfusions, or alleged medical negligence, constituted an intervening cause severing criminal liability for homicide.
3. Whether the trial court’s jury instructions on first-degree murder and causation misstated Michigan law or misled the jury, requiring reversal.

## Decision

- The Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed the first-degree murder conviction and life sentence.
- The court held the jury could find a reasonable and direct causal connection between the shooting, the amputation and transfusions, and the fatal hepatitis and pneumonia.
- The court rejected intervening-cause arguments because transfusion-related disease and ordinary treatment complications did not break the causal chain.
- The court found the jury instructions, considered as a whole, adequately stated the elements of first-degree murder and the applicable causation standard.

## Legal Principles

- Criminal homicide requires a “reasonable and direct causal connection” between the defendant’s act and the victim’s death; tort-style proximate cause concepts are not the governing standard.
- A defendant is liable where the inflicted injuries are reasonably calculated to cause death and “contributed mediately or immediately” to the death, even if the final physiological cause is a secondary condition.
- Medical treatment and foreseeable complications (including disease contracted through necessary treatment) generally do not sever causation; only grossly erroneous treatment of an otherwise non-mortal wound may break the causal chain.
- Jury instructions are reviewed in their entirety; imperfect phrasing is not reversible error absent a misleading or legally incorrect charge on the elements and causation.

## Conclusion

The court upheld a first-degree murder conviction where the defendant’s gunshot wound set in motion an unbroken sequence—amputation, necessary transfusions, transfusion-related hepatitis, and pneumonia—sufficient for criminal causation, and where neither ordinary medical complications nor the challenged instructions warranted reversal.


People v. Flenon, 42 Mich. App. 457, 202 N.W.2d 471 (Mich. Ct. App. 1972)