(a) An element of an offense which requires that the defendant have caused a particular result is established when his conduct is an antecedent but for which the result would not have occurred, and, (1) if the offense requires that the defendant intentionally or knowingly caused the result, that the actual result, as it occurred, (A) is within the purpose of contemplation of the defendant, whether the purpose or contemplation extends to natural events or to the conduct of another, or, if not,
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(B) involves the same kind of injury or harm as that designed or contemplated and is not too remote, accidental in its occurrence or dependent on another's volitional act to have a just bearing on the defendant's liability or on the gravity of his offense; (2) if the offense requires that the defendant recklessly or negligently cause the result, that the actual result, as it occurred, (A) is within the risk of which the defendant was or should have been aware, whether that risk extends to natural events or to the conduct of another, or, if not, (B) involves the same kind of injury or harm as that recklessly or negligently risked and is not too remote, accidental in its occurrence or dependent on another's volitional act to have a just bearing on the defendant's liability or on the gravity of his offense; (3) if the offense imposes strict liability, that the actual result, as it occurred, is a probably consequence of the defendant's conduct. (b) A defendant shall not be relieved of responsibility for causing a result if the only difference between what actually occurred and what was designed, contemplated or risked is that a different person or property was injured or affected or that a less serious or less extensive injury or harm occurred. SOURCE: Guam PC § 8; M.P.C. § 2.03; *Cal. § 408 (T.D.2 1968); Mass. ch. 263 § 20; N.J. § 2C:2-3. SOURCE: §§ 4.25, 4.30, 4.35, 4.40 & 4.45 of this Code; § 16.50 of this Code; §§ 4.55 & 4.60 of this Code. COMMENT: No Penal Code prior to those which have adopted this portion of the Model Penal Code as attempted to define causation in terms of statutory law. These definitions have been left up to court decisions and, traditionally, have been in the form of factual or scientific causation. Thus, the term Aproximate cause@ is used both in court instructions to juries and in those laws in which the concept is found to attempt to determine when a defendant is guilty of an act, the consequences of which usually occur at a later time or different place from the defendant's act. See § 192(3)(b) of the former Penal Code. Compare the treatment of the same crime by § 16.50 of this Code. The Model Penal Code proceeds upon the view that problems of this kind (causation) ought to be faced as problems of the culpability required for conviction and not as problems of Acausation.@ (Model Penal Code, tentative draft No. 4, 132).
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This Section then defines very clearly when a defendant is deemed to have caused, and is thus culpable for, an act which is a crime. Subsection (A)(1) contemplates the same conclusions as are reached by §§ 4.55 and 4.60, following. It will be noted that in virtually all cases to which the above tests would be applicable the defendant would be guilty of some crime, since in each case the defendant would have intended or contemplated the infliction of injury or harm. Whether or not the causal relationship is established is generally determinative therefore, not of the issue criminal liability, but of whether the dependant should be liable of for the greater crime requiring production of the result. In the case of an undesired or uncontemplated event which alters the chain of events leading to the result (e.g. the deceased dying of fright or exposure or lightning following right after an intentional shooting), whether or not the dependant should be subjected to the higher punishment on the basis of attributing the result to his conduct must be decided in terms of whether the actual happening of the result was so remote or accidental as to have no just bearing on the gravity of the offense (or nonliability, as the issue may sometimes be). In the case of some undesigned or uncontemplated act of another person which alters the chain of events leading to the results, the issue is still a justness of holding the defendant for the results, but when we speak of human intervention, the concept of remoteness and accident are inappropriate to evoke the governing consideration. Thus, in these situations the tests is in terms of whether or not the conduct of another is Ato ... dependent upon another's volitional act@ to have any just bearing on punishment or liability. This language remedies what has been referred to as a major weakness of the Model Penal Code by Hart and Honore in Causation in the Law (1959 p. 357). The two authors further observe that: @Because the common-law has never developed the notion of criminal negligence to the extent that Continental Codes have done, the risk theory, by which an actor is held responsible for occasioning harm by giving another the opportunity to do mischief, has not become a prominent in crime as in tort.@ The purpose of the clause, Awhether that risk extends to natural events or to the conduct of another,@ is precisely to remedy this defect. This Section, also, puts in terms of culpability, the former felony-murder rule.