Research On The Scope And Determination Of Indirect Principal Offender

Indirect principal offender, which is also called indirect perpetrator, generally refers to those who utilizes other people's action to commit crime. Because there is particular implication between theory of indirect principal offender and theory of complicity, there have been various theories and debates among domestic and foreign scholars of criminal law for a long time. On the basis of the comparative analysis of relevant theories of indirect principal offender, the paper elaborates in following three parts:Part one is about the basic theory of indirect principal offender. In modern theory of criminal law, the concept of indirect principal offender is generally considered as the domain derived from objective complicity theory for redeeming the deficiencies of theory of dependency of complicity. In order to reconcile conflicts of objective complicity theory, if person with criminal capacity instigates or helps person without criminal capacity or intention of crime to commit crime, the instigator or helper is called indirect principal offender and shall be treated as criminal with full liability. This is the origin of indirect principal offender in countries of continental law. The definition of indirect principal offender refers to a kind of criminal pattern that the actor does not involves in the crime directly, utilizes other people who does not constitute complicity to commit crime and assumes full criminal liability of other person's conduct. The characteristics of indirect principal offender can be summarized as: first, the target that the actor utilizes particular; second, the actor subjectively intends to commit the...