Your job as her lawyer is to bring this girl justice. It seems easy enough, doesn’t it? After all, it’s a simple case of murder.

But wait till you hear what the defense has to say:
In criminal law, the defendant can be found guilty only if his illegal act injures or kills the victim without anything ‘breaking the chain of causation’. If a voluntary act of either the victim or a third party breaks this chain and becomes the new operative cause of injury or death, the defendant can no longer be blamed. This act is called a novus actus interveniens which, in this case, is the victim’s rejection of treatment.

By refusing to have a blood transfusion, she broke the chain of causation between the stabbing and her death; she died not because she was stabbed but because she had turned down treatment.

Also, the victim was perfectly aware that her decision would result in her death, and had even signed a written agreement to the same effect. She was being downright unreasonable by declining the only medical care that could save her just because of her religion, and she could easily have avoided death if she wanted.

Now that you have heard what your opposition has to say, how will you prove to the jury beyond doubt that it is Blaue who is at fault?

Well, here is how the prosecution did it.

They argued that technically, she had died of bleeding into the pleural cavity arising from the penetration of the lung. This was not due to any decision of hers, but due to the stab wound, and the fact that she refused to save herself did not break the causal connection between the stabbing and death. The decision came down to what it was that had ultimately caused the girl’s death. The judge announced that ‘those who use violence on others must take their victims as they find them’ and abide by the thin skull rule.

The thin skull rule states that if a perpetrator injures someone, whose skull is as delicate as an egg shell, causing it to smash, he or she would be considered responsible for the damage irrespective of whether or not the blow would ‘normally’ be fatal or the intention was to kill. This rule, also called the egg shell rule, increases the liability of a person who may commit a crime against another

In other words, Blaue could not excuse himself by pleading that the girl could have avoided death by taking greater care of herself, since it was his knife that had put her in that situation at all. Because the stabbing was still an operative cause of her death, Blaue was found guilty.

In the world of law, every coin has two sides, and a legal practitioner has the ability to see them both. To dig out the loopholes in every situation is a lawyer’s delight and forte, and it can be yours too.

With that, we rest our case.