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Criminal Law And Procedure - Homicide - Causal Relation Between Defendant's Unlawful Act And The Death

Michigan Law Review

Though the books are replete with homicides in which the elusive doctrine of proximate cause has vexed both courts and commentators, it may be ventured that no case has more strikingly run the gamut of proximate cause perplexities than Stephenson v. State. There it appeared that the deceased, an unmarried girl of good reputation and social standing, had been drugged and then raped by defendant in circumstances of the most atrocious brutality. In her dying declaration, admitted by the trial court into evidence, she deposed that "he chewed her all over her body; bit her neck and face; chewed …