Facts
- James Clinton Jordan, a member of the United States Air Force, inflicted a stab wound on a man during a disturbance.
- The victim was hospitalized and died eight days later.
- Initial post-mortem evidence attributed death to broncho-pneumonia, a complication of the stab wound.
- Jordan was convicted based on this original medical evidence.
- After the conviction, a treating doctor developed a new theory contradicting the original cause of death and contacted authorities with this assessment.
- An application was made to admit additional medical evidence, which had not been available at the original trial.
- The new medical evidence indicated that improper medical treatment, including administering a drug (terramycin) to which the victim had shown intolerance, and excessive fluid administration, had caused death rather than the stab wound.
Issues
- Whether the court should admit fresh medical evidence not available during the original trial.
- Whether improper medical intervention can break the chain of causation and absolve the defendant of criminal liability for homicide.
- Whether the requirements for admitting new evidence—specifically, that it was previously unavailable and likely to affect the jury’s verdict—had been met.
Decision
- The court held that the additional medical evidence would likely have influenced the verdict if it had been available to the jury.
- The evidence indicated that the victim’s death was primarily caused by improper medical treatment, not the stab wound inflicted by Jordan.
- The conviction was quashed, with the court finding that the original injury was not the operative cause of death given the subsequent medical errors.
- The judgment set criteria for admitting fresh evidence: it must be new, not available at trial, and likely to have affected the outcome, especially when relating to causation.
Legal Principles
- Improper medical treatment following an injurious act may break the chain of causation, precluding criminal liability if it becomes the substantial and operative cause of death.
- For criminal liability in homicide, the defendant’s conduct must be a substantial and operative cause of death at the time of death.
- Fresh evidence may be admitted if it was genuinely unavailable at the original trial and would probably have influenced the jury’s verdict, particularly in complex medical causation cases.
Conclusion
R v Jordan (1956) 40 Cr App R 152 established that substantial medical error can break the chain of causation in homicide cases, and that courts may overturn convictions based on compelling new medical evidence not available at trial, reaffirming the necessity for verdicts to reflect the most complete and accurate information regarding causation.
