Thursday, May 7, 2026
Page 3
Court of Appeal:
Ordinary Tort Principles of Proximate Cause Apply to Murder
Opinion Says Defendant Is Criminally Liable for Murder of Critically Infirm Victim, Who Survived for Weeks After Attack, Reaffirming That Suspects, Like Civil Parties, Take Victims as They Find Them
By a MetNews Staff Writer
Div. Eight of this district’s Court of Appeal has upheld the murder conviction of a man accused of beating an infirm homeless man with a brick and stabbing him in the throat in an unprovoked attack allegedly fueled by a drug-induced psychosis, rejecting the defendant’s assertion that he did not cause the death of the victim, who was noted to have already been in “very bad” shape before the assault such that he was likely to “die very soon.”
Saying that the defendant’s actions were the proximate cause of the homeless man’s death, the court reaffirmed that “attackers take their victims as they find them” and declared that the victim’s demise was not so disconnected from the beating that public policy concerns weigh against holding him criminally responsible.
Acting Presiding Justice John Shepard Wiley Jr. authored Tuesday’s opinion, saying:
“Mark Mijares’s methamphetamine addiction led to delusions and to his fatal attack on an infirm stranger named Juan Cordova. Cordova lingered in the hospital before dying. The jury convicted Mijares of murder. Mijares’s main argument on appeal is that the trial court erred by failing to instruct on attempted murder. Mijares’s claim is that he did not kill the victim because Cordova already was in such bad shape that, in the hospital, he actually died from his preexisting heart and liver disease. We affirm because Mijares’s attack caused Cordova’s death.”
Justices Victor Viramontes and Matthew Scherb joined in the decision.
First-Degree Murder
After prosecutors charged Mijares with first-degree murder relating to the October 2019 incident, a coroner testified during the 2024 trial that Cordova died from blunt force trauma and injuries caused by the stabbing. However, the medical examiner said that “his condition” before the attack was “very, very bad” and he was likely to “die very soon” even if the defendant had never assaulted him.
When pressed, the witness opined that in “[l]ess than three or four years he would be dead” due to advanced liver and heart disease. Following a verdict of guilt, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Richard S. Kemalyan sentenced Mijares to 25 years to life in prison on May 31, 2024.
Wiley pointed out that Mijares’ “primary argument” on appeal is that “the trial court had a duty on its own motion to instruct the jury on attempted murder” because “a reasonable juror could have ‘found room for reasonable doubt that [he] was the proximate cause of Cordova’s death.’ ”
Wording of Instructions
Noting that the defendant did “not challenge the wording of the instructions the court did give,” the justice said:
“The court instructed jurors that, to find Mijares guilty of first degree murder, they had to find (with our emphasis) that he ‘committed an act that caused the death of another person…There may be more than one cause of death. An act causes death only if it is a substantial factor in causing the death. A substantial factor is more than a trivial or remote factor. However, it does not need to be the only factor that causes the death.’ ”
Addressing Mijares’ causation arguments, he remarked:
“Principles of causation apply to crimes as well as torts. Causation is an essential element of murder. Causation has two components. One is cause in fact, which is also called actual, direct, or but-for causation. The second component focuses on public policy considerations and imposes an additional limitation related to the degree of connection between the conduct and the injury.”
As to actual causation, he opined:
“As a factual matter, no evidence negated Mijares’s attack as a substantial factor in Cordova’s death. Cordova was seriously ill before Mijares’s assault, but nothing proved or implied Cordova’s preexisting afflictions would cause death in a month. The coroner testified the cause of Cordova’s death was the wounds from Mijares. The evidence of but-for causation uniformly pointed to Mijares as the author of death.”
Proximate Causation
Turning to proximate causation, he cited the “classic illustration” of the principle from the 1928 New York Court of Appeals case in Paslgraf v. Long Island Railroad Company, which held that railroad workers who jostled a passenger holding a box of fireworks did not proximately cause a plaintiff’s injuries, sustained after the explosives erupted, because the combination of events leading up to her suffering was too improbable.
Saying that “[t]he same principle applies in criminal law,” he commented:
“[N]o evidence or consideration of public policy mandated an instruction on attempted murder, because there was no question about what killed Cordova. Mijares’s attack was the but for cause of Cordova’s death. As for public policy considerations behind the proximate cause doctrine, Cordova’s demise was hardly freakish or fantastic. Mijares shouted ‘I’m going to take you out.’ Then he did.”
He continued:
“As a matter of law, Mijares…was the proximate cause of Cordova’s death. Many in the population are physically infirm. Their skulls may be as thin as an eggshell. Even so, attackers take their victims as they find them.”
Acknowledging that “[a]ll agree Mijares is entitled to 1,669 days of pretrial credit rather than the 1,637 days the trial court awarded” as “[t]he original figure was the result of a simple miscalculation by counsel,” Wiley declared:
“We affirm the conviction and remand for the limited purpose of correcting Mijares’s pretrial credits….”
The case is People v. Mijares, B338531.
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