This provision lays out two requirements for
establishing the requisite causal connection between a
defendant’s conduct and the resulting harm to the
victim. Cannel, Criminal Code Annotated, N.J.S.A.
2C:2-3, comment 2 (Gann 2000). First, there is the “but
for” requirement that is satisfied if the result in question
would not have occurred without the defendant’s
conduct. State v. Jamerson, 153 N.J. 318, 335-36
(1998). Second, the “but for” requirement must be
interpreted in the context of the mental culpability
required by the Code for each offense. Id. at 336; see also
State v. Martin, 119 N.J. 2, 11 (1990); State v. Lassiter,
197 N.J. Super. 2, 11 (App. Div. 1984); State v. Whitted,
232 N.J. Super. 384-388-90 (App. Div. 1989). Thus,
“causation” is a term of art which means one thing when
a crime is committed purposely or knowingly and
something else for a crime of strict liability such as felony
murder. State v. Martin, 119 N.J. at 11; see also N.J.S.A.
2C:2-3b and N.J.S.A. 2C:2-3e.
Where brain death resulted from defendant’s action
in striking the victim in the back of the head during a
robbery, the brain death of the victim was held to be
“death in fact” and the victim’s family’s subsequent
action in switching off the victim’s respirator did not
constitute a supervening cause of death. State v. Watson,
191 N.J. Super. 464, 466 (App. Div.), certif. denied, 95
N.J. 230 (1983).
Where two defendants who acted separately in
engaging their motor vehicles in a game of “cat and
mouse” on a public highway and caused the death of the
driver of a third vehicle, each could potentially be found
to have caused the result. State v. Brown, 219 N.J. Super.
412, 418-19 (Law Div. 1987); see also State v. Brown,
118 N.J. 565, 607 (1990).
III. CULPABILITY
A. Purposeful or Knowing Conduct
When an offense requires that the defendant
purposely or knowingly cause a particular result, the
actual result must be within the design or contemplation
of the actor, or, if not, it must involve the same kind of
injury or harm as that designed or contemplated.
N.J.S.A. 2C:2-3b. The actual result must not be too
remote, accidental in its occurrence, or dependent on
another’s volitional act to have a just bearing on the
actor’s liability or on the gravity of the offense. Id.; see also
State v. Thomas, 224 N.J. Super. 221, 226-28 (App. Div.
1988).
A jury could find that a defendant purposely or
knowingly caused the death of an intoxicated victim who
had been attending a party in a three-story, wood-framed
apartment building where the defendant deliberately set
a fire on a stairway between the landings of the building,
knowing that a number of people were drinking alcoholic
beverages therein. State v. Martin, 119 N.J. 2, 9-15
(1990).A defendant could be convicted of murder on the
theory that the victim’s death, which resulted from
jumping from an eleventh story window after being
severely and mercilessly beaten by defendant, was
“purposefully” and “knowingly” caused by defendant’s
conduct. State v. Lassiter, 197 N.J. Super. 2, 13-14
(1984). The victim’s behavior was held to have been
provoked entirely by defendant’s abuse and coercion and
was unrelated to any suicidal purpose. Id. at 13.A claim of accidental discharge of a gun is a viable
defense to a charge of second-degree aggravated assault
because it negates the requisite purposeful or knowing
mental states for the crime. State v. Moore, 158 N.J. 292,
301-302 (1999). However, such a claim precludes and
renders inconsistent a claim of non-deadly force self-
defense, due to the fact of the gun discharge. Id. at 301.In conspiracy cases, questions of causation arise that
differ from other crimes which require proof of purposeful
behavior. This is because culpability for vicarious
conspirator liability does not require the specific mental
state required for other forms of accomplice liability
crimes. State v. Bridges, 133 N.J. 447, 466-67 (1993).
Rather, a co-conspirator may be liable for the commission
of substantive criminal acts that are not within the scope
of the conspiracy if they are reasonably foreseeable as the
necessary or natural consequences of the conspiracy. Id.
Thus, in Bridges, supra, three gun-toting conspirators,
who went to a birthday party with the intent to commit
a fourth degree aggravated assault, could be convicted of
the subsequent murder which resulted from one of them
firing a gun into the crowd, since just such an occurrence
could have been anticipated. Id. at 469.When the issue is whether substantive criminal acts
were within the scope of a conspiracy, jury instructions
will be difficult and fact sensitive. Id. at 468. Jurors must
be given a three-fold instruction to consider: (1) whether
the commission of the substantive crime was beyond the
scope of the original conspiracy, and if so, (2) whether it
was objectively foreseeable or was reasonably to be
anticipated that the crime would be committed in view