The Negative Of The Concept Of Compound Fault

Since the amendment to Criminal Law in 1997, there have been some crimes whose mental fault is hard to define, leading to a heated debate among the theoretical and practical circles of Criminal Law. No theory of any school has been generally recognized up to now. In accordance with the traditional criminal law theory, every kind of criminal acts has one and only one corresponding mental fault, deliberate or default, also the commonly held view now. Some scholars, however, put forward differences, stating that apart from the two clearly defined faults, there is also the possibility of compound fault covering both. This view is also open to discussions. From the debates it can be concluded that provisions in mental fault of criminal law and the relevant formulations still leave some room for improvement. This present paper, therefore, is aimed to provide some solutions to these problems stated above. The structure of this paper is as follows:The first chapter presents the origin of compound fault in China. It mainly introduces the backgrounds and causes of the concept of compound fault, followed by the definition of compound fault as well as its distinction with other similar concepts, and the specific contents of compound fault.The second chapter is devoted to the doubts over the theoretical foundation of the concept of compound fault. Fuzziology—the cognitive foundation of the concept of compound fault will be presented. Through research and analysis on the subject of fuzziology, the paper will negate the introduction of fuzziology into the judgment in criminal law study. In addition, the present author also carries out some study on the mental fault in English and German criminal laws, holding that the "recklessness" in English criminal law and the "the third criminal faul"in German criminal law are not applicable to the rational foundation of compound fault.The third chapter is concerned about the "negation of compound fault". This chapter will mainly analyze the conflicts between the compound fault theory and the present criminal law system. It is in contradiction not only to the basic principle of criminal law, regardless of the boundary between deliberate crime and default, but also to such systems as recidivism and stay of execution, etc, maybe bringing about the dysfunction of these systems.The fourth chapter is the statement of other relevant theories. It introduces some new ideas and new solutions in defining the mental fault by some scholars. The research and analysis of these views will lay a foundation for the presentation of the present author's own idea in the following chapter.The fifth chapter comes to the solution of the mental fault clarification. Through the analysis, the author puts forward the solution to the differences on the mental fault. The mental fault should be decided on the basis of the actor's attitudes to the criminal consequences, and such crimes should be categorized into complicated object crime. Study and classification of these complicated crime objects should be conducted, separating major object from minor object, and judge the actor's mental fault according to the major object's attitudes to the violation. In addition, this paper suggests an amendment to the provisions concerning these crimes, replacing the requirement of cases of serious consequences with gross violation, which is the most effective solution to the present controversy.