The death was a natural and direct consequence of the shooting ผู้ตายถึงแก่ความตายจากบาดแผลกระสุนปืนภายหลังกว่า 9 เดือนเพราะการติดเชื้อจากการรักษาที่ไม่ดี ยังเป็นผลธรรมดาที่สืบเนื่องจากการกระทำของจำเลย ความสัมพันธ์ระหว่างการกระทำและผลจึงไม่ขาดตอน คงผิดตามมาตรา 288

SUPREME COURT DECISION No. 1478/2528
Year: 1985 (B.E. 2528)
Relevant Code Sections: Criminal, Section(s) 63, 83, 288

SUMMARY
The victim was shot in the back, the bullet severing his spinal cord. He was paralysed from the waist down and died of the wound and a severe infection rather more than nine months later. Both lower courts convicted under Section 288. The further appeal raised a single question of law, that the shooting caused injury only and the death came from the infection. The Supreme Court answered that a wound left to become infected through poor treatment still produces a death that follows in the ordinary course from the defendant's own act, so a defendant who fired with intent to kill is guilty of the homicide. The judgment below was affirmed.

FACTS OF THE CASE
The defendant shot the victim, severing the spinal cord. The victim became paralyzed and died 9 months later from infection resulting from the wound.

COURT'S HOLDING
The Supreme Court held that the death was a natural and direct consequence of the shooting. A delay in death does not break the chain of causation where the death results from complications of the original injury, even if poor medical treatment contributed to the infection.

LEGAL ANALYSIS
Nine months and an infection stood between the shooting and the death, and the defendant built his appeal on both. The Court treated neither as a break in the chain.

The test it applied is that the death was a ordinary consequence flowing from the wound, and poor medical treatment that allowed the wound to become infected is within that ordinary course rather than outside it. Intervening negligence by a third party, including a hospital, does not relieve the person who inflicted the injury unless it is so unusual that the death can no longer be said to follow from the wound.

PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS
A long gap between the wound and the death does not help the defence. Where the victim dies of complications of the original injury the death remains an ordinary consequence of the act, and poor medical treatment in the meantime does not break the chain of causation. Defence evidence has to attack the causal link itself, not the delay or the quality of the hospital care.

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Note: This is an English-language summary of the Thai original judgment.
For the authoritative Thai text, please refer to the Thai version above
or visit deka.supremecourt.or.th.