Murder concept
Murder is the deprivation of the life of another person, that is, intentionally causing death (Article 105 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).
The legislator divides all murders into three categories:
- Simple
- Qualified
- Privileged
Qualified murder is a murder that the perpetrator committed under aggravating circumstances, and privileged – under mitigating circumstances.
For simple murder, the legislator provides the following punishment: imprisonment for a period of 6 to 15 years, together with restriction of freedom for up to 2 years, or without it.
Definition
What is murder? How and by what is it characterized? The Criminal Code of the Russian Federation has a clear definition of this term. Murder is the intentional killing of another person.
Death is the cessation of the functioning of all organs and systems of the body. First of all, this condition is characterized by cardiac arrest, which is commonly called clinical death. But the process is completely completed approximately 7–10 minutes after the person’s heart has stopped. Life is the highest value, therefore deprivation of it is punished with particular severity.
Murder is a criminal offense with serious penalties. Before knowing its possible limits, it is necessary to study the concept and types of murders. All this plays a huge role when making a judicial decision.
Manslaughter
Above is information that reveals the concept and types of murders. Moreover, the main classifications of crime are also now known. What is privileged murder and causing death with aggravating circumstances (qualified), we also discussed. What then is considered a simple type of this crime?
Such murders include causing the death of a citizen in the absence of aggravating and mitigating circumstances. We can say that this is a crime committed without compelling reasons, not for hire and in an absolutely adequate state. In fact, in practice, simple murder does not occur very often. After all, if you look carefully at the corpus delicti, the motive plays a huge role. Often, a simple murder can be classified as a qualified murder if there is evidence of aggravating circumstances.
What else is worth paying attention to? Simple murder, the concept and types of which are not very diverse, is qualified when it is committed:
- out of jealousy;
- during a quarrel or fight (not for hooligan reasons);
- due to complicated personal relationships between the criminal and the victim, revenge, envy, hostility, hatred.
According to circumstances
We discussed what is included in the subjective and objective aspects of the described crime. Now we should consider in more detail the concept and types of murders. In Criminal Law, classification can be varied. For example, according to the characteristics of the parties. At the moment, the following types of causing death to a citizen are distinguished:
- simple;
- under aggravating circumstances;
- under extenuating circumstances.
This is an important division of the crime in question. Indeed, depending on the type of murder, the court will make one or another decision to punish the accused. It is not difficult to guess how exactly the severity of the sanctions applied to the violator is distributed. There are minimum sentences for simple murders, maximum sentences for committing a crime with aggravating circumstances.
Subjectivity
The concept, signs and types of murder cannot be fully disclosed without awareness of the subjective side of it, because this feature relates directly to the criminal and his actions.
The subjective side can only be characterized as intent. The citizen who commits the murder is fully aware of his actions and their social danger, foresees the outcome and understands the inevitability of the death of the victim. The person can either desire it or be indifferent to the victim's demise. Indifference is also included in the subjective side of the crime. All of the above circumstances can be classified as murder. The concept, composition and types of this crime should be described in detail.
Who may end up in the dock for the crime committed? The subject of the crime is a person who has reached the age of 14 years. It is impossible to judge a citizen previously using the sanctions of this article.
It is important to remember that a teenager who has reached the age of 14 and committed a murder must be in an adequate and sane state. In the absence of these conditions, it will not be possible to judge the violator under the relevant articles of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. After all, if a person is inadequate, he is not able to foresee the social danger and the outcome of his actions.
Features of qualification of simple murders
The main principle of the classification of simple murder is that it is carried out by the method of elimination.
Murder is considered simple if there were no mitigating or qualifying circumstances when it was committed.
Can difficulties arise in qualifying for a subject? Yes, we are talking about the time of death of the victim on the one hand, and the age of the perpetrator on the other. In order to bring a person to criminal responsibility, he must have reached the legal age at the time of committing the crime.
Let's say that on the eve of his birthday, a 13-year-old teenager inflicted many injuries on a classmate in a quarrel and left him to die. The victim died two days later, when the perpetrator was already 14 years old. Is there criminal liability for murder in this case? No, because the time of the crime is the time of the commission of the act, not the consequences.
All situations when there is no life yet or no longer must be qualified according to the direction of intent, that is, as an attempted murder (the victim is already dead, but the perpetrator does not know about it and deliberately inflicts fatal wounds on him).
It is necessary to distinguish between causing death by negligence and simple murder. The distinction, as the name suggests, is made according to the form of guilt.
In the case of simple murder, the perpetrator is aware that his act will result in the death of a person, but is indifferent to this or consciously allows it.
In the case of death caused by negligence, the perpetrator does not wish the death of the victim, but arrogantly believes that it will not occur, or does not foresee the occurrence of death at all, although he could and should do so.
If a criminal wanted to kill one person , but mistakenly killed another, the qualification does not change.
Aggravating circumstances
But this data is still not enough to determine exactly what punishment should be given to the criminal for the action committed. What else should you pay attention to? The concept and types of premeditated murder include mitigating and aggravating circumstances. Therefore, it is worth paying attention first of all to the second type of causing death to a person. Indeed, in this case, the punishment is imposed in a more severe form than in all other outcomes. These are the rules of Russian legislation.
Murder with aggravating circumstances includes a crime committed against two or more persons. According to Art. 105 (clause 2) of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, this kind of act will not form a chain of causing deaths. Simply, such a murder will be regarded as an act with aggravating circumstances. This also includes:
- murder against an official and his relatives who performed an official duty or public duty;
- causing the death of a helpless minor;
- murder of a pregnant woman;
- with particular cruelty;
- murder, which was carried out in a way dangerous to society;
- blood feud;
- by conspiracy;
- for hire;
- with robbery, blackmail, banditry;
- hooliganism;
- murder to conceal another crime;
- due to hostility due to political, ideological and national differences;
- murder for the purpose of using the body of the deceased as an organ donor.
All of the above circumstances are aggravating. They impose more serious penalties on the offender than simple murder. But the peculiarities of the crime do not end there.
Criminal legal characteristics
As you know, if there is no corpus delicti, there is no crime, and, therefore, there is no responsibility, so it is important to determine the subjective and objective signs of this crime.
Subjective signs
The subject in this case is general, i.e. a sane individual who is already fourteen years old.
Guilt on the subjective side in simple murder appears in the form of intent, direct or indirect.
The expressions “premeditated murder” and “careless murder” should not be used, because in the first case there is a tautology, and in the second - illiteracy.
There is a separate crime for causing death with a reckless form of guilt.
The perpetrator must have a clear understanding of the social danger of the act, foresee the inevitability of the victim’s death, or be aware of its possibility, and also consciously desire such an outcome or be indifferent to it.
At the same time, attempted murder is impossible with indirect intent, only with direct intent.
The Supreme Court clarifies that for this type of crime it is necessary to correctly establish the optional features, especially the motive, of the subjective side. It is impossible to commit murder without motive ; in addition, the precise definition of these signs helps to distinguish simple murder from related types of crimes and determine the punishment.
Objective signs
The immediate object is human life, that is, the independent psychophysiological existence of a person. Life is not a right, but an independent value protected by criminal law.
Life has a beginning - birth, and an end - death. It is fundamentally important to legally correctly define these points in order to exclude the possibility of incorrect classification.
From what moment to start counting life and when to count its end is a complex question and causes a lot of controversy. Moreover, in different branches of law it is solved differently.
For example, in inheritance law, a will may be invalidated if it did not take into account the rights of unborn children. Consequently, the legislator thus considers the beginning of life from the moment of conception. However, in criminal law everything is different.
Regarding the beginning of life , legal science has developed two points of view, one of which considers the beginning of life to be the moment of complete separation of the fetus from the mother’s body, while signs of life are recorded in the fetus, such as breathing.
The second approach is more common - the beginning of life is associated with the moment of the onset of childbirth. It seems that the legislator adheres to the second approach, since the criminal code provides for liability for those situations when a mother kills her newborn child.
At the same time, the law specifies that it occurs either during childbirth or immediately after it.
The end of life is also a controversial issue. Stopping breathing or heartbeat does not always mean death, since in this case what doctors call clinical death occurs, and as practice shows, this process is often reversible.
One of the laws in the field of healthcare says that death is not the death of the heart or other parts of the body, the brain, or the immediate beginning of cadaveric decomposition, that is, biological death. An alternative definition is necessary for resuscitation, since dying is not a one-time process and takes place in several stages.
From a legal point of view, brain death is sufficient to establish death. One of the legislative instructions on the definition of death states that brain death is equivalent to the death of a person, and it also states that brain death means the irreversible cessation of all its functions, even with a beating heart and ventilation.
Life begins with the onset of labor and ends with brain death.
Objective aspects
A crime with a material element, which means the mandatory occurrence of death for the possibility of qualification under the first part of Article 105 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.
Simple murder is most often committed in the form of an act, but in rare cases the act can be presented in the form of inaction.
In order to incriminate the perpetrator of murder committed by inaction, a simultaneous combination of the following factors is necessary:
- the perpetrator was obliged to take actions to preserve the life of the victim,
- he could do it at a certain point in time,
- the victim himself could not perform actions aimed at preserving his life.
The most common example of such a murder is a situation where a mother deliberately does not feed her newborn child. But most often murder is committed through active actions.
The objective side of the crime lies in the special impact on the human body of varying strength, resulting in the death of the victim.
There are 4 types of such effects:
- direct bodily
- mediated bodily,
- direct mental
- mediated mental.
The culprit can use his own strength and someone else’s for this. In the first case, he takes active actions aimed at destroying the integrity of the victim’s body.
This also includes the use of instruments of crime, including bladed weapons.
The alien force is:
- natural phenomena,
- animals,
- machinery, including firearms and vehicles,
- other people, that is, insane, minor accomplices.
The above examples are the so-called direct bodily impact on the victim, when the perpetrator uses environmental factors to cause death. However, in rare cases, the impact on the victim can be indirect.
If during physical influence the perpetrator influences the body of the victim, then during mental influence he interacts with his psyche and emotions. Example: deliberately communicating some shocking information to a sensitive person with the intention of causing a heart attack. An indirect form of mental influence is carried out using various means of communication, telephone or the Internet.
The mandatory consequences of this crime are the death of a person, and it can occur much later than the commission of the act.
This time difference will not matter if a causal logical connection is established between the death of the victim and the act of the perpetrator. The crime is over when the victim dies.
Privileged Murders
Now it is necessary to pay attention to the concept and types of privileged murders. This type of crime is not very common, but it does occur. Moreover, it can be classified as “with mitigating circumstances”. This murder is usually classified as a separate concept. The types of privileged killings are varied.
Such crimes include the following:
- committing it after childbirth;
- in a state of passion;
- when self-defense measures are exceeded.
In all cases except the last point, the citizen is in a state that can hardly be called sane. Therefore, circumstances may be considered mitigating. More about them below.
