The Objective Imputation Theory in Criminal Law : Types of Causation
In most cases, the existence of causation is not problematic. If A throws a stone vase intentionally against B and destroys it, there is no doubt that the operations of A (throwing the stone) and the typical result (intentional destruction of the vase of B), there is a causal link.
However, there are several types of causality that can present problems:
- Causation alternative: Several independent conditions acting together, each one of them sufficient to produce the result. All of them are effective while for the result. For example: A and B independently give each other, one dose of deadly poison that acts the same time.
- Cumulative Causation: In this case, several conditions independently act through joint action in the result. For example: A and B are independently each other a poison to C, which acts lethally on him because of the joint operation of the two doses.
- Courses causal atypical: It produces a result for a cause that is attached to the action. For example: A injures B. The doctor C, which caters to B, makes a medical error (malpractice), for which B dies.
- Causation hypothetical: Another cause could have caused the same time the result. For example: A gives B a lethal dose of poison. B would have died even without the dose of poison at the same time point.
- Cases of causality interrupted or broken: In these cases there is an independent intervening event preclude the existence of the previous causality, so that it is no longer operational. For example: A food poisoning B. Before the poison takes effect, C killed by a bullet to B.
- Support for a causal process and implemented: In this case, a hazard that already exists. For example: A, before the imminence of a train crash in the lane in which he found that would produce injured, he wandered to another lane, in which also produces shocks and shock injuries. (Castillo, 2003, pp. 43-55).
- Causation advance: Opera in cases where two or more behaviors are directed to the same end, but one is ahead of the others and produces first results. The problems of causation advanced was easily resolved with natural logic: “One of the conduct of behavior was the result displayed so that those actions that” almost “what caused and are quite irrelevant from the point of causal view and we are also from the standpoint of criminal responsibility for the outcome, because if you clearly define the causal link with one of them, the other takes a back seat. If not able to determine the producing agent of the result, should apply the principle in dubio pro reo. (Vargas Gonzalez et al, 1998, p.57).