''S v Williams'',1986 (4) SA 1188 (A). an important case in

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...

n law, with significant implications specifically for the

law of persons Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior, with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been variously described as a science and as the art ...

and

criminal law Criminal law is the body of law that relates to crime. It proscribes conduct perceived as threatening, harmful, or otherwise endangering to the property, health, safety, and Well-being, welfare of people inclusive of one's self. Most criminal l ...

, was heard in the Appellate Division of the

Supreme Court In most legal jurisdictions, a supreme court, also known as a court of last resort, apex court, high (or final) court of appeal, and court of final appeal, is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...

on 19 September 1986, with judgment handed down on 30 September. The bench comprised Chief Justice Rabie and Judges of Appeal Corbett, Hoexter, Botha and Van Heerden, who found that, when a person is kept alive artificially by means of respirator, its eventual disconnection is not in legal terms the act which causes death; it merely constitutes the termination of a fruitless attempt to avert the consequences of the wounding. The causal connection between the wounding and the eventual death exists from beginning to end, in other words; it is not interrupted by the disconnection of the respirator. The court avoided the question of whether or not brain death, in line with medical science, should amount to legal death.

Facts

The accused had broken into the home of the deceased with the intention of robbing her. On entering her bedroom, he shot her in the neck. She was still breathing on her admission to hospital. Two days later, her doctors declared that she showed no sign of brain activity. The brainstem had ceased to function; she was effectively dead. Two days further, after thorough neurologic scrutiny, the ventilator was disconnected, and after ten minutes she registered no heart activity.

Judgment

Facing a charge of

murder Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification (jurisprudence), justification or valid excuse (legal), excuse committed with the necessary Intention (criminal law), intention as defined by the law in a specific jurisd ...

, the accused argued that the cause of

death Death is the end of life; the irreversible cessation of all biological functions that sustain a living organism. Death eventually and inevitably occurs in all organisms. The remains of a former organism normally begin to decompose sh ...

had not been the discharge of lead into the deceased's neck, but rather the disconnection of the ventilator: a ''

novus actus interveniens Breaking the chain (or ''novus actus interveniens'', literally ''new intervening act'') refers in English law to the idea that causal connections are deemed to finish. Even if the defendant can be shown to have acted negligently, there will be n ...

''. It was the doctor, in other words, who ought to be held liable for her death. Both the trial court (the

Cape Provincial Division The Western Cape Division of the High Court of South Africa (previously named the Cape Provincial Division and the Western Cape High Court, and commonly known as the Cape High Court) is a superior court of law with general jurisdiction over the ...

) and the Appellate Division rejected this defence. The trial court held that the moment of death occurred when the brain ceased to function, so she would have been long dead when the doctor disconnected the ventilator. The Appellate Division found that it was unnecessary to decide on the legal propriety of this view (which was the one held by medical science), and resolved the matter instead on the basis of the "traditional view of the community," which is that one is dead when one stops breathing and one's heart stops beating. The court emphasised that its silence on the issue of brain death should not be taken to be an indication that the approach of the trial court ought to be accepted. The question then was left open, and there remains to this day no general legal definition of death in South African law. What was clear was that, where a person is so seriously wounded that he would, in the absence of prompt medical intervention, very soon be dead, and is kept alive artificially by means of a respirator, the eventual disconnection of the respirator could not be seen as the act which caused the death. It was merely the termination of a fruitless attempt to save a life: that is, to avert the consequences of the wounding. The causal connection between the wounding of the deceased and his eventual death exists from beginning to end, and is not interrupted and eliminated by the disconnection of the respirator.

References

Notes

{{Reflist 1986 in South African law 1986 in case law Appellate Division (South Africa) cases South African persons case law South African criminal case law

Facts

Judgment

See also

References

Notes