R v Le Brun [1992] QB 61

Facts

• The defendant struck his wife during an argument.
• Following the initial blow, which rendered his wife unconscious but was not itself fatal, the defendant attempted to move her body.
• While moving her, he dropped her, resulting in a fatal skull fracture.
• The Court of Appeal considered whether the defendant’s actions—initially striking his wife and then accidentally causing fatal injury while moving her—could be treated as part of the same transaction for the purposes of criminal liability for manslaughter.

Issues

1. Whether the initial unlawful act (the strike) and the subsequent act (dropping the unconscious victim) could together constitute the actus reus for manslaughter as a single continuous event.
2. Whether the “one transaction” principle, previously used in property offences, should be extended to manslaughter cases involving a sequence of causally connected actions.
3. Whether the required mens rea for manslaughter could be established when the fatal act occurred during ongoing conduct aimed at concealing the original offence.

Decision

• The Court of Appeal held that the defendant’s actions formed a single transaction, and the fatal drop occurred during the continuation of his unlawful conduct.
• The court found that the attempt to move and conceal the victim linked the two acts, enabling the combined actions to satisfy the actus reus for manslaughter.
• The distinction was made from cases where an intervening act would break the chain of causation; here, the events were considered a continuous sequence driven by the defendant's ongoing objective.
• The required mens rea for manslaughter was held to be established based on the initial unlawful act, despite the fatality occurring during a subsequent but connected action.

Legal Principles

• The “one transaction” principle allows multiple actions, closely connected in time and purpose, to collectively constitute a single actus reus for certain offences.
• This principle, though previously prevalent in property offences like theft and robbery, is applicable to manslaughter when the actions form a continuous series motivated by a common intent, such as concealment of an initial offence.
• Establishing actus reus using this principle does not negate the requirement for an accompanying mens rea; the mental element must still be proven in connection with the initial unlawful act.
• The causal chain remains intact where subsequent acts are a natural progression of the defendant’s ongoing objective and are not broken by independent, unrelated events.

Conclusion

R v Le Brun [1992] QB 61 extends the "one transaction" principle to instances where a sequence of causally linked actions can form a single actus reus for manslaughter, provided they constitute one continuous chain of events motivated by an ongoing objective, thereby clarifying how causation and criminal responsibility are determined in complex scenarios.