Odger's English Common Law

CRIMINAL NEGLIGENCE, CAUSING DEATH. 295
misconduct to the death. 1
It will then, in strict law, be for
the prisoner to prove that he was not negligent, or at all
events was not criminally negligent, in acting as he did.
But in practice the prosecution generally takes upon itself
the burden of proving affirmatively that the prisoner was
guilty of criminal negligence.
Of course, if the death was caused by a pure accident, no
crime is committed. But if the act done or the omission
made was one which any one of ordinary prudence ought, under
the circumstances, to have known to be dangerous to human
life or likely to cause grievous bodily injury, then to do that
act or make that omission is culpable negligence and not a
pure accident. Where what has happened was in the circum-
stances so probable a result of what the prisoner did that a
person of ordinary prudence would have taken precautions to
prevent it, and the prisoner omits to take such precautions
with fatal results, he is clearly guilty of negligence. Such
negligence may consist either in the doing of an act rashly
without knowing its nature or probable consequences, or in
the careless and incautious manner of doing it.
But to convict the prisoner it is not sufficient to show that
he was guilty of some negligence in the matter. 2 An amount
of negligence, which would entitle an injured plaintiff to
damages in a civil action, will often be insufficient. To render
the defendant criminally liable, the jury must be satisfied
that the prisoner's state of mind was criminal. Whenever
the natural or probable consequence of the prisoner's conduct
is to cause death or grievous bodily harm to another, and
the prisoner is culpably heedless of this obvious fact or
culpably reckless as to whether such consequences follow or
not, his state of mind is criminal ;
and, if death ensue, he will
be convicted of manslaughter. But without some such evi-
dence of mens rea, mere negligence will not expose him to
penal consequences, though it may render him liable to a
civil action.
It is difficult to define with any greater precision the degree
1 Per Huddleston, B., in Isitt v. Railway Passengers' Assurance Co. (1889), 22
Q. B. D. at pp. 510, 511.
2 See R. v. Izod (1904), 20 Cox, 690.