Kibbe v. Henderson

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Kibbe v. Henderson
Court U.S. Court of Appeals, 2nd Circuit
Citation 534 F.2d 493
Date decided 1976

Facts

Barry Kibbe and Roy Krall decided to rob George Stafford after meeting him in a bar and offering him a ride. They took his money, and Kibbe made Stafford drop his pants and take off his shoes at the side of the highway to prove that he didn’t have any more money. Then they left Stafford, who was subsequently hit by a passing car after wandering out into the street. Kibbe was charged with murder in the second degree.

Issues

Whether the omission of the definition of causation in a crime that has a necessary element of causation permits the case to be dismissed.

Holding

Judgment for Kibbe.

Rule

Where death is produced by an intervening force, the liability of one who put an antecedent force into action will depend on the difficult determination of whether the intervening force was a sufficiently independent or supervening cause of death.

The controlling questions are whether the ultimate result was foreseeable to the original actor and whether the victim failed to do something easily within his grasp that would have extricated him from danger.