## Facts

- Robert Hamilton Jenkins stabbed the victim, who identified Jenkins as the assailant before being taken to a hospital.
- The victim suffered serious wounds to the neck and arms, lost substantial blood, and was in shock upon arrival at the hospital.
- Physicians performed an arteriogram to assess vascular injury; the victim suffered a rare, fatal reaction to the dye used in the procedure.
- Medical testimony indicated the immediate cause of death was the dye reaction; the victim probably would have survived absent the reaction, but probably would not have survived without medical treatment.
- At trial, the jury was instructed that criminal liability required a causal relationship between Jenkins’s act and the victim’s death.
- The jury was given verdict options of murder, manslaughter, and not guilty, and it convicted Jenkins of murder; he was sentenced to life imprisonment.
- On appeal, Jenkins argued the trial court should have instructed the jury on assault and battery with intent to kill and assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature.

## Issues

1. Whether the trial court committed reversible error by refusing to charge lesser, non-homicide assault offenses when the victim’s immediate cause of death was a rare fatal reaction to dye used during medical treatment.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court of South Carolina affirmed Jenkins’s murder conviction.
- The court held there was no prejudicial error in refusing to submit the requested assault verdicts.
- The court reasoned that, because the jury was properly instructed on causation, its murder verdict necessarily resolved causation against Jenkins and excluded verdicts for offenses not involving death.

## Legal Principles

- A defendant may be guilty of homicide when the injury inflicted contributes “mediately or immediately” to the victim’s death, even if the immediate cause of death is a rare complication from medical treatment necessitated by the injury.
- When the jury is properly charged on causation and returns a guilty verdict for murder, that verdict necessarily includes a causation finding that forecloses lesser, non-homicide assault verdicts.
- Refusal to instruct on lesser offenses is not reversible where, under the jury’s causation finding embodied in the murder verdict, lesser non-homicide offenses could not logically apply.

## Conclusion

The court affirmed the murder conviction, holding that the stabbing injuries were a legally sufficient contributing cause of death despite the victim’s rare fatal reaction during necessary medical treatment, and that the properly instructed jury’s murder verdict made the absence of lesser assault charges non-prejudicial.


State v. Jenkins, 276 S.C. 209, 277 S.E.2d 147 (1981)