CAUSATION IN HOMICIDE, 'FRIGHT, ESCAPE OR SELF-PRESERVATION' CASES: YARRAN v THE STATE OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA.

Situations in which a deceased person has died in the course of "fright, escape or selfpreservation'1 have long posed complex causation questions for the criminal law. The Western Australian Court of Criminal Appeal has had the opportunity in recent years to consider the situation where a victim's death follows threats or intimidation delivered by the defendant. In Yarran v The State of Western Australia, decided in 2019, the Court focused on the role that section 272 of the Criminal Code Act Compilation Act (1913) plays in resolving the difficult causation issues which can arise in these sorts of cases. While the earlier case of TB v The State of Western Australia2 had resolved some of the questions associated with the operation of section 272, Yarran directly raised the issue of the victim's reaction to the threats or intimidation: what relevance should the "unreasonableness" or "disproportion" of a victim's response to an accused's threats have to the question whether the accused caused' that response under S272? Is the nature of the victim's response part of the legal causation inquiry, or does it only concern the criminal responsibility (scope of liability) inquiry within the excuse of Accident? This article explains the court's approaches to this question and highlights some of the more general, fundamental questions raised by the case around the relationship between the different causation provisions in the WA Criminal Code. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]