For legal qualifications corpus delicti such an element as the subject of a crime plays a very important role. The concept, signs, types, and also criteria for evaluating a subject are enshrined in the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. For the correct qualification of a criminal act, you need to know all the smallest nuances that this element of the composition implies.
Subject of crime - definitions of concept and meaning
The concept of the subject of the crime implies an individual who is considered guilty of a dangerous act, endowed with all the necessary features of this element and at the same time has reached the age of involvement in punishment.
The subject can be only those people who have the ability to be aware of the nature of the actions being performed, and also able to lead them. The ability to control and be aware of the actions performed arises only in mentally healthy subjects. Defining the concept of the subject of crime and its features, we can say that the main criteria of this element is considered age and sanity.
The meaning of the subject is quite diverse. Firstly, in the absence of any of the characteristics of the subject, the offense is excluded. If a criminal act was committed by two persons, and one of them possessed signs of a common subject, complicity as a qualifying sign can be excluded. Secondly, the signs mitigating or aggravating guilt also relate to the characteristics of the subject of the crime and are taken into account not only during qualification, but also during sentencing. Thirdly, a number of common features of the subject of the crime are able to determine the possibility of imposing a certain type of punishment.
Age as a sign of the subject of crime
Any case of a criminal act has certain individual characteristics that relate to the characteristics of the subject. Each person has specific character traits that are unique to him. All individual character traits are not able to be reflected in theoretical and legislative norms. Criminal law defines the most typical personality traits of the perpetrator, which are reflected in the characteristics of the subject of the crime.
Defining the concept and characteristics of the subject of the crime, it should be noted that age is the most important condition for bringing the perpetrator to justice. The basis for determining the age at which there is a probability of responsibility is the level of human consciousness, as well as its ability to adequately understand what is happening. Juvenile persons are not held accountable because of their age, because of which they are unable to fully recognize actions.
The age characteristics of the subject of crime distinguish the following age categories:
- Social (civil).
- Biological (functional).
- Chronological (passport).
- Psychological (mental).
The total age for criminal responsibility begins after reaching 16 years. Also, the Criminal Code provides for certain types of criminal acts (Articles 105, 131, 158, 161, 162 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), for which liability arises from the age of 14.Such reduced age limits speak only about one thing: that the danger of the above acts should be more than obvious to the understanding of a teenager.
Age, as a sign of the subject of the crime, plays a very important role for sentencing, as well as the general qualification of the crime. An important point for determining age is the establishment of an exact date of birth. This issue, as a rule, is solved either on the basis of the submitted documents, or through a medical examination.
Sanity
Mandatory features of the subject of the crime include not only age criteria, but also data on the sanity of the person. Criminal liability may be imposed only on those persons who knowingly went to criminal acts. For entities who committed a crime in a state of insanity, responsibility will not be applied, instead, medical measures are prescribed.
The concept and characteristics of the subject of the crime are based on the criteria of sanity, which implies the state of the human psyche at the time of the crime, as well as the ability to recognize and guide the nature of one’s actions.
Opening the concept of sanity, criminal law uses two evaluation criteria: legal and medical.
The concept and medical criteria of insanity
In order to determine the concept and characteristics of the subject of the crime, expressed in the form of insanity, it is necessary to establish the medical criteria of this element.
The list of such criteria includes mental illness, which can be divided into 4 categories:
- chronic mental illness;
- short-term mental disorders;
- dementia;
- other diseases.
Mental chronic diseases consist of recurrent or continuously occurring diseases that can cause persistent, profound personality changes. This category of diseases should include: schizophrenia, senile psychosis and dementia.
Short-term disorders are an acute mental illness that can be treated. This category includes: alcoholic, symptomatic and reactive psychoses.
Signs of the subject of crime, expressed in the form of dementia of a person, combine cases of persistent and various states of lowering the intellect of an individual, especially at the level of criticism and narrowing. This group includes patients with a reduced ability to adapt in society.
The category of other diseases includes cases in fact which are not mental illnesses, but in which there is a particular mental disorder. For example, mental infantilism (in other words, immaturity), psychopathy.
An important task of a forensic psychiatrist is to establish the correct diagnosis. The diagnosis alone cannot resolve the issue of sanity. Many diseases are manifested by a wide variety of symptoms - mild, not harmful to life, and severe, which entail disability. This range of mental disorders is characteristic of epilepsy, oligophrenia, disorders of vascular and traumatic origin.
Sanity - a legal assessment criterion
Legal criteria of sanity are determined by the court in the process of assessing the identity of the perpetrator. These general characteristics of the subject of the crime determine the identity of the offender as incapable of understanding the nature of the committed criminal acts. Conclusions regarding sanity the judge is based on the conclusions of a forensic expert. Reflecting all the legally significant elements of the subject’s mental disorders, the legal criterion reduces the whole variety of psychological ailments of the person to a single denominator, thereby making the clinical material suitable for further solving the legal problems posed. In other words, using the legal criterion, the terms of forensic psychiatry are interpreted in the language of law.
The legal criterion can be characterized by two features:
- Intelligent.
- Strong-willed.
Intellectual signs of the subject of the crime suggest the inability of a person to realize the danger of the acts committed. That is, the guilty person does not understand that his actions pose a danger to those around him and public relations, which are under the protection of legal norms. For example, a patient with schizophrenia associates a respectable citizen with a criminal, mistakenly believing that by killing him he will prevent the commission of a crime.
A strong-willed sign is the inability to lead their actions. It manifests itself if the guilty person is able to realize the danger of the act, but at the same time does not have the ability to refrain from committing it. This condition is typical for drug users at the time of withdrawal (drug starvation).
In order to recognize the criminal as insane, the presence of any of the above signs in combination with the medical report of the expert is required.
Limited sanity
Based on the concept of the subject of the crime, as well as on the general signs qualifying this element, it must be taken into account that in some cases the legislation of the Russian Federation provides liability for persons with mental disorders that do not exclude sanity.
The introduction of norms regarding limited sanity is provoked by the existing psychological and penitentiary reality, which manifests itself in the form of a wide spread of mental anomalies that limit, but at the same time do not prevent the ability to control their actions. The application of this kind of standards causes numerous discrepancies between forensic and medical assessments.
The legal assessment of limited sanity is not fully expressed in awareness of public danger. The presence of legal criteria depends only on a preliminary assessment of the mental state of a person by a forensic expert. The medical criterion forms a violation of the intellectual as well as the emotional sphere of the person’s life, which does not allow him to fully realize and manage his actions.
A distinctive feature of limited sanity is the ability of a person to be aware of their actions and to manage them, but at the same time, due to a mental disorder, the impossibility of a full mental activity.
Limited sanity is manifested by shallow mental disorders that are not pathological in nature. For this type of disorder, various abnormal processes of behavior are characteristic, which are expressed by intermittent psychophysical reactions (psychopathies and neuroses). Anomalous disorders include conditions that upset the balance between the processes of inhibition and excitation. Some of these processes mitigate the perpetrator’s guilt during the sentencing. Also, disorders that do not exclude sanity may be taken into account by the court for prescribing measures of compulsory medical nature.
Special subject
Having defined the concept and characteristics of the subject of the crime, it is necessary to pay attention to the special subject. This element implies a person who, together with the general characteristics of the subject, is characterized by special properties inherent only to him and the features necessary to form the corpus delicti.
The signs characterizing a special subject are called optional, since they are not provided for by all corpus delicti. The characteristic features of a special subject fixed in the disposition limit the possibility of applying punishment on general grounds, since responsibility for such persons occurs if the subject has atypical properties.
Signs of a special subject are manifested in the following:
- They act as a structural element, without which there is no composition.
- They act as a sign that forms a compound with aggravating circumstances.
- They matter in the individualization of punishment.
Fixing and classification of signs of a special subject of crime
The signs of this element of the composition are fixed not only in legislative acts, but also are included in the very concept of the subject of the crime. The special subject of the crime has optional features that are provided for by Chapter 30 of the Criminal Code. This section provides liability for acts committed against:
- public service and local government;
- state power.
In all other cases, the signs follow from the very content of the article, although they are not directly fixed in it. An example is rape article although it is legally established that this type of crime is committed only by men. In some cases, in order to define the concept of a special subject of a crime, it is necessary to turn to legislative acts of other (related) branches of law.
Signs of the subject can be fixed in law in both negative and positive form. Thus, the nature of the officials in the Criminal Code is determined on the positive side, and the criteria of art. 123 (abortion) are expressed in a negative manner.
It is worth noting that the features of special subjects are classified on the grounds of:
- state-legal status (foreigners and citizens of the Russian Federation);
- gender;
- marital status (parents or persons who replace them);
- military duties (soldier or conscript);
- official position (interrogator, prosecutor, investigator, judge and others);
- professional duties (doctors or other medical workers);
- the nature of the work performed (members of the EC, persons working with secret documents).
Signs of a special subject of crime included in aggravating circumstances
There are corpus delicti, where signs of special subjects act as a basis mitigating the guilt of the criminal. In this case, the special subject has features that play an integral role in qualifying the crime.
For example, a crime, where there is a special subject whose signs are part of aggravating circumstances, is fraud (Article 159 of the Criminal Code) or embezzlement and misappropriation (Article 160 of the Criminal Code). Fraud involving the use of official position is manifested in a wide variety of forms, but at the same time it is committed only in two ways: abuse of trust or deceit. Thus, a typical form of fraud is expressed in the fact that the guilty person deliberately pretends to be a person who has the right to receive any property, but in fact he is not such a subject, therefore, the actions performed are illegal. Another striking example is fake documents, on the basis of which a person planned to take possession of material assets belonging to another person.
Conclusion
Summing up, it should be noted that elements of corpus delicti play a very important role in criminal law. The subject of the crime is presented in the form of a person who committed a criminal act that entailed socially dangerous consequences. The subject of the crime is general and special, depending on this criterion, signs are also determined.
Subject evaluation criteria are optional and general. Thanks to a sufficiently detailed description and characterization of this element of the crime, the official who is conducting the proceedings is able to correctly qualify the crime and, accordingly, establish the exact measure of punishment that the subject must incur for the act committed.
