The Injection

Over about eighteen hours the Accused, a companion and a woman they knew shared a large quantity of alcohol and cocaine at her apartment. With her consent, the Accused injected cocaine into her forearm. She immediately began to convulse violently and appeared to stop breathing. Both men tried to resuscitate her and failed. The companion wanted to call for emergency help; the Accused, by intimidation, talked him out of it. He placed her, still convulsing, on her bed, wiped the apartment for fingerprints, and the two men left. Six or seven hours later the companion came back alone and called for help. She was pronounced dead. The medical evidence was that the injection had caused a cardiac arrest and that she had later asphyxiated on the contents of her stomach. The Accused was charged with manslaughter. His counsel conceded that injecting the cocaine was an unlawful act, trafficking under the Narcotic Control Act, so the Crown's case was that a death caused directly by an unlawful act is manslaughter. The defence argued that a conviction with the stigma of manslaughter should require proof that a reasonable person would have foreseen a risk of death, not merely a risk of some bodily harm, and that she had in any event consented.