In the year of 1970, the defendant, Kibbe was hanging out with his friend, codefendant, Krall in the bar in New York. It was at this bar, where the two defendants met the victim, Stafford. Stafford was drinking heavily at that evening, and he wanted to continue drinking, but the bartender refused to give him more alcohol. Stafford tried to give the bartender a bill of a hundred dollar, but the bartender did not pay much attention to it and refused to give him more bear. However, that hundred dollars caught the attention of Kibbe, who was watching Stafford drinking. He hatched a plan with his friend and decided to rob him of his money. They took Stafford to another bar, but the bartender refused to offer him any alcohol. Then they went to the third bar, and Stafford got lucky the third time and started drinking. After drinking from the bar, they decided to go to Canandaigua.
On the way to Canandaigua, as Krall was the one on the wheels, the defendant, Kibbe demanded Stafford to give him the cash he was carrying with him. Stafford did not have any left and was told by the defendant to completely strip off to show he did not have any money with him. After a while, Stafford found himself on the side of the road, with no lights on the highway. The weather did not help him any good, as there was a strong breeze blowing, and it had just quite lately snowed that aggravated his condition as he was without any jacket. As Stafford was waiting for some help to arrive, he was hit by a truck on the road (www.casebriefs.com). The driver was a college student, Michael Blake, who immediately got out of his truck and found him severely injured. Michael told the court that he saw Stafford waving his hands for help, but he could not react because of the small distance between his truck and Stafford, and could not be able to apply the brakes or to steer the truck to the other side. The injuries on the head and body proved to be fatal and Stafford died in the incident. The two defendants were arrested on the next day.
Kibbe and Krall were tried for the murder of Stafford and for robbery (Johnson, 2017). The two of them were tried in front of the grand jury, but the causation issue was not explained properly. The jury found the defendant, Kibbe, guilty of the murder of Stafford in the second degree. They were also found guilty of the robbery in the second degree and for larceny in the third degree. The sentence of the defendant was 15 years imprisonment for the conviction of murder, for the conviction of robbery, Kibbe was sentenced to 5 to 15 years, and for the conviction of larceny, he was sentenced to 4 years (www.h2o.law.harvard.edu). The case was quite a complex one, with regards to the causation element involved in the case. The jury was not apprised of the factor of causation, and Kibbe also complained that the jury must make a decision which proves everything without a shadow of a doubt. The court held on to its stance and said that Kibbe was responsible for the death of Stafford since he was the one who put Stafford in that position. Proximate cause is the course of event in which the court makes a sense that a particular injury has been caused by a certain event or action (Henning, 2013). The court was adamant that the proximate cause was applied correctly because had it not been for Kibbe to abandon Stafford on the sidewalk in the cold weather, he would not have suffered those injuries that led to his sad demise. The direct link between the actions of Kibbe and Krall and the death of Stafford was made.
References
Johnson, E. A. (2017). Two Kinds of Coincidence: Why Courts Distinguish Dependent from Independent Intervening Causes.
Kibbe v. Henderson | Casebriefs. (2018). Casebriefs.com. Retrieved 22 March 2018, from https://www.casebriefs.com/blog/law/criminal-law/criminal-law-keyed-to-dressler/causation/kibbe-v-henderson/
Kibbe v. Henderson. (2018). H2o.law.harvard.edu. Retrieved 22 March 2018, from https://h2o.law.harvard.edu/cases/1654
Henning, K. (2013). Explaining Causation of Injury–An Australian Case Study. In Legal and Forensic Medicine (pp. 643-659). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
