What type of homicide is this?

In the case: The defendant tried to scare victim 1 by throwing a brick at his window, the window smashed thus injuring victim 1 and 2.

Victim 1 tried to run away as they were being chased by the defendant but ended up falling over the pavement and they later died from head injuries.

Due to complications at the hospital victim 2 died the following day.

What is the liability for homicide? I’m certain it’s murder however the defendants intention was to scare the victim (although it’s obvious that throwing a brick at glass is dangerous).

Thank you in advance

How can you prove his intention was just to scare and not to do gbh or actually kill?

One subtle point of difference that occurs to me, reading the question again. The relevant unlawful act might be different for V1 and V2. V2 dies as a result of the glass shattering from the window, so you would have an easier time using the criminal damage as the unlawful act for UAM committed against V2. By contrast, V1 dies running away (presumably scared) from D as a continuing assault perpetrated by D against V1, so you’re best off using the assault. If you use the assault as the unlawful act for both, then you have to deal with awkward issues of transferred malice for V2, since D only intends to scare V1.

In the case: The defendant tried to scare victim 1 by throwing a brick at his window, the window smashed thus injuring victim 1 and 2.

Victim 1 tried to run away as they were being chased by the defendant but ended up falling over the pavement and they later died from head injuries.

Due to complications at the hospital victim 2 died the following day.

What is the liability for homicide? I’m certain it’s murder however the defendants intention was to scare the victim (although it’s obvious that throwing a brick at glass is dangerous).

Thank you in advance

One subtle point of difference that occurs to me, reading the question again. The relevant unlawful act might be different for V1 and V2. V2 dies as a result of the glass shattering from the window, so you would have an easier time using the criminal damage as the unlawful act for UAM committed against V2. By contrast, V1 dies running away (presumably scared) from D as a continuing assault perpetrated by D against V1, so you’re best off using the assault. If you use the assault as the unlawful act for both, then you have to deal with awkward issues of transferred malice for V2, since D only intends to scare V1.

I'm not convinced by this.

V2 is simpler. The criminal / dangerous act is criminal damage - V2 dies as a result of complications is constructive manslaughter.

V1 is a much more difficult situation. On the facts of the rubric, I'd be inclined to say that there is no manslaughter at all. It is not made out that D commits any causal offence. It only states that V1 runs away from D. No assault is described. On these facts, the case should be looked at in context of Carey 2006, where the Court of Appeal quashed manslaughter convictions for persons guilty of affray - which were said to have caused a victim to run away and die during this flight.

It specifically says that D intended to scare V1 by throwing a brick at the window. How is that not common assault? Not trying to sound sassy at all - I just don’t follow your analysis that there is no assault.

There's no causation between the criminal damage and the death. It is foreseeable that throwing the brick causes glass causes injury causes death. It is not foreseeable that throwing the brick causes V to run away causing a trip, causing death.

In the judgement in Carey, this is made out quite carefully on rather similar facts. On the facts of the problem - it only states that V1 runs away. It does not say why, nor that any other offence was committed. It's not unreasonable to aver that V1 is inside their own home (as the brick was thrown at their window). V1 running away from D (who is outside) isn't foreseeable, nor causal. The key point in Carey is that the unlawful/dangerous act did not cause the death. It was some subsequent action. This would be similar to this case.

As for common law assault - this isn't made out at all on the facts. There is not enough information. The intention of D isn't enough - V1 must anticipate violence. We don't know that V1 did this at all - they may have been oblivious until the brick came through the window.

From a uni point of view - the reason I would be very very careful with this question is that the facts seem so similar to Carey, I think it is a question about whether or not you understand that particular case law.

I didn’t say you needed to establish a causal link between criminal damage and V1 running away/dying. The facts are these: D throws a brick, intending to scare V1, which is clearly an act capable of constituting common assault. V1 runs away, which would logically indicate they were in fear of immediate and unlawful violence. Why else would they run away? We are told D then continues to chase V1, which I would argue is a continuation of the assault that begins with throwing the brick. I disagree with your comparison with Carey for a number of reasons. Firstly, the unlawful act in Carey was affray, which was chosen on the basis that it would allow the CPS to charge multiple Ds with manslaughter, as opposed to just the defendant who directly assaulted the victim. The judgment is clear that if they had charged the defendant who threw a punch at the victim with assault rather than affray, that would have been sufficient for an UAM charge. However in that scenario, the case would have failed because the victim had an unknown underlying medical condition that caused her to have a heart attack and die as she ran; the death was not caused by the assault. Taking the affray as the unlawful act for UAM, the court concluded that the acts constituting the affray were not, in those circumstances, capable of meeting the dangerousness test in Church. The Court of Appeal was also not satisfied that the victim ran away as a result of the affray, because there was no evidence of that on those particular facts. So it’s quite a lot more nuanced than you make out, and doesn’t properly fit these facts. For one thing, V doesn’t have an underlying condition that would predispose them to dying if they run, they die because they crack their head open on the pavement while D is chasing them. The better authority to rely on here is Roberts, which involved an assault on a victim who then tried to escape by jumping out of a moving car. The Carey judgment touches on this line of authority at para 48, and distinguishes those authorities from the facts in the Carey case.

The key here is that in Roberts, the victim was escaping. This is differentiated from running away in Carey. There is nothing to show V1 was escaping. Without that, there is no causation. That's the upshot of Roberts.

Though assult would actually make the person fear/apprehend being hit/unlawful application of force soon. So doesn’t cover being scared as such. So you could argue that one either way?

I don’t think we were ever taught Carey so I’d have used Roberts instead. Then yes uam (which can lead to minimal sentences in these sort of cases)

Here, you are told in black and white terms that D is chasing V1, and V1 is therefore running away in order to get away from D. That is the only logical conclusion on these facts. So this is in my opinion squarely within the Roberts line of authority.

Edited for clarity