Court Opinion

ID: 9859111
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 18:43:22.644356+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:06:22.721128
License: Public Domain

ALBIN, J.,
dissenting.
“Hard facts make bad law” is an old saw and an apt description of the resolution of this appeal. In this vehicular homicide case, William Patrick, a sixty-six-year-old lawyer, suffered multiple devastating injuries when his car, which was stopped at a light, was rear-ended by this drunk-driving defendant. The majority opinion describes at length the victim’s gruesome injuries, painful hospitalizations, and medical treatment. After the passage of five months during which his condition continued to deteriorate, Patrick, in accordance with his wishes, was taken off a ventilator, and died several hours later.
*469Defendant was charged with aggravated manslaughter in the death of Patrick and convicted of the lesser-included offense of vehicular homicide. The question before this Court concerns the charge to the jury in which the trial judge, in essence, directed a verdict on the element of causation. The judge instructed the jury that the removal of the ventilator was not “a sufficient intervening cause to relieve the defendant of criminal liability,” provided that “defendant’s actions set in motion the victim’s need for life support” and the victim’s “death was the natural cause of defendant’s actions.” In reversing defendant’s conviction, the Appellate Division, in a thorough and thoughtful opinion by Judge Wallace, held that “the trial judge’s instructions on intervening cause deprived defendant of the opportunity to have the jury decide the essential issue of causation.” State v. Pelham, 353 N.J.Super. 114, 126, 801 A.2d 448 (App.Div.2002). I agree with Judge Wallace and add these words in dissent from the majority’s decision.
Proof of causation is an element of every criminal offense and, until today, was no different from other elements that must be submitted to the jury. The New Jersey Code of Criminal Justice (Code) reserves to the jury the ultimate authority to determine whether intervening circumstances break the chain of causation of criminal culpability. In this case, the Code required the jury to determine whether the manner of Patrick’s death, which followed from the voluntary removal of life support, was “too remote, accidental in its occurrence, or dependent on another’s volitional act to have a just bearing on the actor’s liability or on the gravity of his offense.” N.J.S.A. 2C:2-3c. The general and broad language of that provision was intended to apply to the infinite number of variables that arise in the unique circumstances of each new case, including that of this defendant. Causation was a matter that the jury should have been trusted to decide correctly.
Instead, the majority ignores the statutory language that governs this case and imports into the law of causation its own moral and philosophical preferences as it departs from the bedrock *470principle that a judge cannot direct a verdict against a defendant on an element of an offense, even where evidence of guilt appears overwhelming. State v. Anderson, 127 N.J. 191, 205, 603 A.2d 928 (1992). The majority has carved from the Code’s broad language on causation an inflexible rule that, in all eases, a victim’s termination of medical care to support life may never be considered an independent intervening circumstance capable of breaking the chain of causation. The majority has come to that conclusion because it finds that the victim’s removal of life-sustaining treatment is always foreseeable.
I object not so much to the wisdom of that new rule of law, as to its failure to find any support in the text of the Code. The Code’s drafters left to the jury the commonsense judgment of distinguishing those cases in which intervening circumstances “would have a just bearing on the actor’s liability or on the gravity of his offense.” N.J.S.A. 2C:2-3c. Our jurisprudence has traditionally deferred to the jury the delicate and difficult task of deciding the facts on which a defendant’s guilt or innocence depends. State v. Ingenito, 87 N.J. 204, 211-12, 432 A.2d 912 (1981).
The majority’s new rule is not only at odds with the Code and the fundamental right of an accused to have the jury decide each element of an offense, but will also have unanticipated consequences as it is reflexively applied to future cases. The jury will no longer be permitted to consider whether the chain of causation is broken in homicide cases where the victim refuses to take antibiotics or other benign medication necessary to sustain life without interfering with the enjoyment of life; where the victim declines a blood transfusion for religious or other reasons; or where the victim decides that he no longer wishes to continue using a medical device, such as a respirator or dialysis machine. The removal of a ventilator or the refusal to take medication or to allow a blood transfusion, all of which may be necessary to sustain life, may or may not, depending on the circumstances, “have a just bearing on the actor’s liability or on the gravity of his offense,” but the ultimate decision always has been one for the jury.
*471The application of a general rule, such as the Code’s on intervening circumstances, necessarily will lead to varied outcomes, depending on the facts of a particular case. The understanding that two separate juries might decide the same case differently is an acknowledgement of the lack of perfection in our system of justice. That jurors, through their collective experience and humanity, are the conscience of the community is not a weakness, but a strength and the reason why, I suspect, we have not lost faith in the jury as the best means of delivering justice. In its quest for consistency, the majority sacrifices the patient application of a general rule intended to apply to particular facts to render a just result.
This case is not about a patient’s right to self-determination, to decide the course of his medical treatment, including its termination, or the right to die with dignity. The majority conflates the right of the patient to self-determination with the right of the accused to have his ease decided by a jury. A patient’s right to refuse or terminate life-sustaining medical treatment is indisputable. N.J.S.A. 26:2H-53 to -78; In re Conroy, 98 N.J. 321, 347-55, 486 A.2d 1209 (1985). That right is not in conflict with a defendant’s right to have a jury decide whether he should be held criminally liable for causing the death of a victim who elects to terminate his life. U.S. Const, amend. VI; N.J. Const, art. I, ¶ 9. The defendant and prosecutor have no standing to interfere with the patient’s decision-making process regarding the course of his medical treatment. It is highly improbable that a crime victim would remain on life support solely for the purpose of assuring that a defendant who victimized him would not be charged with homicide. It is equally improbable that a victim would decline medical intervention for the purpose of assuring a homicide prosecution.
Our jurisprudence and the legislative histories of our Code and the Model Penal Code (MPC) provision upon which our criminal causation provision was patterned do not support the path taken by the majority. A defendant is not guilty of vehicular homicide *472unless death “is caused by driving a vehicle ... recklessly.” N.J.S.A. 2C:ll-5a (emphasis added). Causation is a material element that must be proved by the State beyond a reasonable doubt. NJ.S.A. 2C:l-13a, ~14h(l)(a), -14i; N.J.S.A. 2C:2-2.1
N.J.S.A. 2C:2-3 addresses the causation requirements of reckless homicide. First, the defendant’s conduct must be a “but-for” cause of the victim’s death. N.J.S.A. 2C:2-3a(l); State v. Martin, 119 N.J. 2, 11, 573 A.2d 1359 (1990). Second, because vehicular homicide requires that the defendant acted recklessly,
the actual result must be within the risk of which the actor is aware or, ... if not, the actual result must involve the same kind of injury or harm as the probable result and must not be too remote, accidental in its occurrence, or dependent on another’s volitional act to have a just bearing on the actor’s liability or on the gravity of his offense.
[N.J.S.A. 2C-.2-3C.]
Our causation provision, although not identical to its MPC source, is firmly rooted in MPC § 2.03,2 and has been construed *473by this Court accordingly. See Martin, supra, 119 N.J. at 11-19, 573 A.2d 1359 (construing N.J.S.A. 2C:2-3a and -3b consistently with their respective sources, MPC § 2.03(1) and (2)). The premise underlying each code’s causation provision is that variations between the actual result of a defendant’s conduct and that contemplated, designed, or probable under the circumstances are to be treated as “problems of culpability rather than metaphysical problems of causation.” Id. at 11, 573 A.2d 1359. See also II The New Jersey Penal Code, Final Report of the New Jersey Criminal Law Revision Commission cmts. 1 & 3 on N.J.S.A 2C:2-3 at 49-51 (1971) (N.J. Final Report); MPC § 2.03 emt. 2 at 258 (1985); MPC § 2.03 cmts. 1 & 2 at 132 (Tentative Draft No. 4 1955) (MPC Tentative Draft). Both codes avoid the vague concept of “proximate cause,” and focus on whether a remote result of which a defendant’s conduct was a “but-for” cause “bears on the defendant’s culpability for the offense.” Martin, supra, 119 N.J. at 11, 573 A.2d 1359.
New Jersey is only one of two states that have adopted MPC § 2.03 and explicitly added the intervening volitional conduct of others as a factor to be considered in determining causation.* 3 The inclusion of that factor in cases of human intervention is based on “deeply engrained common sense ideas about causality and responsibility,” where the issue “properly turn[s] on the voluntariness of the intervening actor’s conduct — to the extent that his intervention is independent and voluntary, the defendant’s liability should be diminished.” MPC § 2.03 emt. 3 at 262. Moreover, only New Jersey has incorporated the term “just” bearing into its causation provision. Despite the American Law Institute’s (ALI) debate on the wisdom of putting “undefined questions of justice to *474the jury” by including the optional term “just” in its final MPC provision, our Code’s drafters, by adopting that term, surely believed its proponents’ rationale that its inclusion “ha[d] the merit of putting it clearly to the jury that the issue it must decide is whether ... it would be just to accord” significance to the actual result’s remoteness, accidental quality, or dependence on another’s volitional act in determining liability. MPC § 2.03 emt. 3 at 261 n. 16.
N.J.S.A. 2C:2-3b and -3c “deal explicitly with variations between the actual result and that designed, contemplated or risked.” N.J. Final Report, supra, cmt. 3 on N.J.S.A. 2C:2-3b, - 3c at 50. “The actual result is ‘to be contrasted with the designed or contemplated [ ]or ... probable[ ] result in terms of its specific character and manner of occurrence.’” Martin, supra, 119 N.J. at 12, 573 A.2d 1359 (emphasis and alteration added) (quoting MPC, supra, § 2.03 cmt. 3 at 260 n. 13). “Thus, when the actual result occurs in the same manner and is of the same character as the designed or contemplated [or probable] result, the causation requirement is satisfied.” Ibid. On the other hand, if the actual result does not occur in the same manner as the designed, contemplated, or probable result, “ ‘the culpability requirement is not established unless the actual result involved the same kind of injury or harm as that [probable,] designed or contemplated but the precise injury inflicted was different or occurred in a different way.’” Ibid, (quoting N.J. Final Report, supra, cmt. 3 on N.J.S.A 2C:2-3b, -3c at 50-51). Our Code
makes no attempt to catalogue the possibilities, e.g„ to deal with the intervening or concurrent causes, natural or human; unexpected physical conditions; distinctions between the infliction of mortal or non-mortal wounds. It deals only with the ultimate criterion by which the significance of such possibilities ought to be judged, ie., that the question to be faced is whether the actual result is too accidental in its occurrence or too dependent on another’s volitional act to have a just bearing on the actor’s liability or on the gravity of his offense.
[N.J. Final Report, supra, emt. 3 on 2C:2-3b, -3c at 50-51. See also MPC, supra, § 2.03 cmt. 3 on subsections (2)(b) and (3) at 261, 263-64.]
That formulation was chosen by the drafters of our Code in lieu of the ALI’s rejected proposed alternative that a defendant would *475be liable for an actual result that defendant knew or should have known was “rendered substantially more probable by his conduct.” MPC, supra, § 2.03 cmt. 3 at 261 n. 17. The noted advantage of “putting the issue squarely to the jury’s sense of justice,” rather than couching the culpability issue in terms of a foreseeable substantial probability, “is that it does not attempt to force a result which the jury may resist. It also leaves the principle flexible for application to the infinite variety of eases likely to arise.” N.J. Final Report, supra, cmt. 3 on 2C:2-3b at 50-51.
In sum, the drafters of our Code clearly contemplated, as previously recognized by this Court, that “[w]hen the actual result is of the same character, but occurred in a different manner ..., it is for the jury to determine whether intervening causes or unforeseen conditions lead to the conclusion that it is unjust to find that the defendant’s conduct is the cause of the actual result.” Martin, supra, 119 N.J. at 13, 573 A.2d 1359 (emphasis added). This is just such a ease.
Here, as in State v. Martin, supra, 119 N.J. at 11, 573 A.2d 1359, defendant does not dispute that his conduct was a “but-for” cause of the victim’s death. Instead, he claims that the State must prove the additional requirement of N.J.S.A. 2C:2-3c that he recklessly caused the actual result, i.e., the victim’s death, five months after the accident and two hours after the victim and his family elected to disconnect his ventilator. In order for this defendant to be guilty of vehicular homicide, the State must prove that the specific character and manner of the victim’s death was either: (1) within the risk of which defendant was aware; or, (2) if not, then not “too remote, accidental in its occurrence, or dependent on another’s volitional act to have a just bearing” on defendant’s liability or the gravity of his offense. N.J.S.A. 2C:2-3c; Martin, supra, 119 N.J. at 12, 573 A.2d 1359.
The majority holds, in essence, that the risk that a victim will elect to reject or terminate some life-sustaining measure as a result of his injuries is, as a matter of law, within the risk of which defendants are aware. I part with the majority on this point. *476Whether defendant was aware of the risk was a question for the jury. I do not doubt that under the circumstances of this case, a jury could have found that the manner of Patrick’s death was not “too remote, accidental in its occurrence, or dependent on another’s volitional act to have a just bearing” on defendant’s liability. N.J.S.A. 2C:2-3c. However, by directing a verdict to the effect that the victim’s decision to terminate his life was not a sufficient intervening circumstance to relieve defendant of criminal liability, the trial court deprived defendant of the right to have a jury decide the issue of causation. That ruling directly contravened the Legislature’s intent that intervening circumstances be put “squarely to the jury’s sense of justice.” See N.J. Final Report, supra, cmt. 3 on 2C:2-3b at 50-51; MPC, supra, § 2.03 cmt. 3 at 261 n. 17. This Court’s affirmance of that ruling eviscerates not only the right to trial by jury, but also the Legislature’s intent that our causation provision be “flexible for application to the infinite variety of cases likely to arise.” N.J. Final Report, supra, cmt. 3 on 2C:2-3b at 50-51.
Moreover, the majority’s heavy reliance on other states’ common-law proximate causation jurisprudence as support for its position is misplaced. Not one case cited by the majority interprets a causation provision similar to our own. Only twelve states have codified general statutory causation provisions. Three states have adopted the essential elements of MPC § 2.03 verbatim, and do not include N.J.S.A. 2C:2-3’s additional requirements that the actual result of a defendant’s conduct not be “too ... dependent on another’s volitional act to have a just bearing” on his liability or on the gravity of the offense.4 Three states have wholly rejected the MPC causation provision on which ours was patterned and instead rely solely on a draft provision of the Final Report of the National Commission on Reform of Federal Criminal Laws (Brown Commission) that “deals with only one aspect of the traditional problem of causation, indicating that if an act is a ‘but-*477for’ or concurrent cause of a result causation ‘may be found.’”5 See MPC, supra, § 2.03 cmt. 5 at 264-65 & n. 23. Two states have adopted provisions incorporating the Brown Commission draft provision, along with provisions analogous to MPC § 2.03(3)(a), supra note 2.6 Two states have adopted the MPC tentative draft alternative that the ALI ultimately rejected, and thus couch causation culpability in terms of whether the actual result was “foreseen or foreseeable as a substantial probability.”7 See MPC, supra, § 2.03 cmt. 3 at 261 n. 17. The majority’s reliance on other jurisdictions’ law of causation is thus not persuasive because those cases do not interpret our unique provision, which explicitly incorporates both the intervening volitional conduct of others and the jury’s sense of justice as factors to be considered in determining a defendant’s liability.
While asserting the hard-and-fast rule that a victim’s decision “to terminate life support, may not, as a matter of law, be considered an independent intervening cause,” ante at 468, 824 A.2d at 1093, the majority maintains that a remoteness assessment is viable pursuant to the Code. In approving the trial court’s charge, the majority finds that “the jury could not consider removal as the cause of death when determining causation but it could consider whether the causal link was broken by remoteness in time of death.” Ante at 468, 824 A.2d at 1093. Therefore, the majority must be suggesting that after a period of time, to be fixed by the jury, a victim’s decision to terminate life support will not transform an aggravated assault into a homicide. The various *478factors set forth in the Code that were to have a “just bearing on the actor’s liability or on the gravity of his offense” were not meant to be compartmentalized and detached from one another, but considered as a whole in reaching a just verdict. The drafters of the Code expected a jury to consider the interplay between remoteness and the volitional act of another as breaking the chain of causation. In making no allowance for the varied circumstances in which life support may be terminated by a victim, the majority does not permit the jury to consider the level of medical assistance required to sustain life, for example, whether the medical regimen is so burdensome as to deny even a minimal quality of life, or is relatively benign in comparison. The nature and scope of the medical care and the quality of life of the victim are factors that should be considered along with remoteness in determining whether intervening circumstances — the voluntary termination of life support — should have a just bearing on the outcome of the case.
Although the verdict in this case might well have been the same had the issue of intervening circumstances been submitted to the jury for its consideration, the Court’s per se rule rewrites the Code’s statutory provision on causation and directs'a verdict on an element of an offense in violation of the defendant’s right to trial by jury. For these reasons, as well as those expressed by the Appellate Division, I dissent.
Justice LONG joins in this opinion.
For reversal and remandment — Chief Justice PORITZ, COLEMAN, VERNIERO, LaVECCHIA and ZAZZALI — 5.
For affirmance — Justices LONG and ALBIN — 2.

 NJ.S.A. 2C:2-2 provides, in relevant part, that “a person is not guilty of an offense unless he acted purposely, knowingly, recklessly or negligently, as the law may require, with respect to each material element of the offense." NJ.S.A. 2C:2-2a.
A person acts recklessly with respect to a material element of an offense when he consciously disregards a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the material element exists or will result from his conduct. The risk must be of such a nature and degree that, considering the nature and purpose of the actor's conduct and the circumstances known to him, its disregard involves a gross deviation from the standard of conduct that a reasonable person would observe in the actor's situation.
[NJ.S.A. 2C:2“2b(3).]

 MPC § 2.03(1) is identical to NJ.S.A. 2C:2-3a. MPC § 2.03(3), the source for NJ.S.A. 2C:2-3c and -3d, provides, in relevant part:
(3) When recklessly or negligently causing a particular result is an element of an offense, the element is not established if the actual result is not within the risk of which the actor is aware or, in the case of negligence, of which he should be aware unless:
(a) the actual result differs from the probable result only in the respect that a different person or different property is injured or affected or that the probable injury or harm would have been more serious or more extensive than that caused; or
*473(b) the actual result involves the same kind of injury or hatm as the probable result and is not too remote or accidental in its occurrence to have a [just] beating on the actor’s liability or on the gravity of his offense. [MPC § 2.03(3) (Official Draft and Revised Comments 1985) (emphasis added).]

 See Haw.Rev.Stat. § 704-214 to-217 (1993); NJ.S.A. 2C:2-3.

 See Del.Code Ann. tit. 11, § 261 (2001); Mont.Code Ann. § 45-2-201 (2001); Pa. Stat. Ann. tit. 18 § 303 (West 1998).

 See Ark.Code Ann. § 5-2-205 (Michie 1997) (“Causation may be found where the result would not have occurred but for the conduct of the defendant operating either alone or concurrently with another cause unless the concurrent cause was clearly sufficient to produce the result and the conduct of the defendant clearly insufficient."); Me.Rev.Stat. Ann. tit. 17-A, § 33 (West 1983) (same); N.D. Cent.Code § 12.1-02-05 (1997) (same).

 See Ala.Code § 13A-2-5 (1994); Tex. Penal Code Ann. § 6.04 (Vernon 2003).

 See Ariz.Rev.Stat. Ann. § 13-203 (West 2001); Ky.Rev.Stat. Ann. § 501.060 (Michie 1999).