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State v. Govan

Court of Appeals of Arizona (1987) | 744 P.2d 712; 154 Ariz. 611; 1987 Ariz. App. LEXIS 568

4 min read

TL;DR: A man shot his girlfriend, paralyzing her. She died from pneumonia nearly five years later. The court affirmed his manslaughter conviction, holding that her subsequent illness and alleged "loss of will to live" were foreseeable consequences of his act and not superseding causes breaking legal causation.

Legal Significance: Establishes that a victim's subsequent illness or "loss of will to live" resulting from a catastrophic injury is a foreseeable "response" to the defendant's act, not an abnormal event that breaks the chain of proximate causation for homicide.