California, United States of America
The following excerpt is from People v. Woods, 11 Cal.Rptr.2d 231, 8 Cal.App.4th 1570 (Cal. App. 1992):
However phrased, the extension of the doctrine of derivative criminal liability for the natural and probable consequences of an assisted crime thus entails two components of proximate cause, cause in fact and foreseeability. The crime aided and abetted must be causally linked to the charged crime and the aider and abettor must either have foreseen, or should have foreseen, that the charged crime was a natural, probable and reasonable consequence of crime abetted. Thus, a charged offense is the natural and probable consequence of the target offense if under the circumstances it is both a likely outcome of, and is causally linked to, the target crime. These components are independent of intention of the aider and abettor. As this court noted in People v. Rogers, supra, 172 Cal.App.3d at p. 515, 217 Cal.Rptr. 809, "[t]his is a question of legal causation independent of any intention that the result obtain."
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