Causation in offenses of absolute liability

COMMENTARY ON §702-217 The elimination of mens rea or culpability requirements from a penal offense should not make the accused liable for improbable consequences of the accused's conduct. The specter of such liability would be too precarious and capricious to induce an actor to make rational adjustments in the actor's behavior in order to avoid the sanction. The futility of an attempt to impose penal liability for the improbable consequences of conduct has been succinctly expressed by Hart and Honore: ... [S]urely, the elimination of mens rea as... [a requisite for penal] liability does not mean that the accused is to be liable for harm, even if it only occurred through the conjunction of his act with the deliberate act of some independent person or with some quite extraordinary event. The plain man's protest would be that in such cases the accused 'did not do it', even though the harm would not have occurred without what he did.[1] This section is not repetitive of §702-216 (dealing with negligent causation). There will undoubtedly be situations where a person will fail to perceive a risk of a probable consequence although the person's failure of perception did not involve a "gross deviation from the standard of care that a law-abiding person would observe in the same situation." __________ §702-217 Commentary: 1. Hart & Honore, Causation in the Law 361 (1959).