A legal anomaly?

[chickenfeet]

On Boxing Day, a fifteen year old girl was killed while shopping. She was hit by a single stray bullet after a gun fight broke out between two youths in a busy part of downtown. Police have arrested the two alleged gunmen and charged them with fire arms related offences. No-one has been charged with murder because they haven't identified who fired the fatal shot. Surely there is something wrong with the law here? Both gunmen are equally culpable and should face murder charges. If a person or persons open(s) up unlawfully with a fire arm in a crowded place, purposing the death of Person A or B, they are surely equally culpable if person X, Y or Z is killed, regardless of which gunman fired the fatal shot.

Comments

[australian-joe.livejournal.com]

Right, despite what TV and movies show, many (most?) criminal trials aren't settled by dramatic unveiling of facts (usually agreed by all parties), but on points of law such as causation.

Causation is a complex area! There can be multiple contributing causes even if none on their own would be a sufficient cause, for example. You also get causal chains being severed by "novel intervening acts". It's a mess. 8->

The more I think about this, I think the smart move for the prosecution would be to try to pin "the first firearm discharge" on someone, and claim that without that there wouldn't have been any shots fired, and thus it is the cause of anything resulting from shots fired - and use that to make out manslaughter. I suspect without being able to clearly identify who fired the killing bullet murder can't be made out here.