Judgment Of Crime Of Passion And Its Criminal Responsibility Analysis

Crime of passion is the crime resulted from the strong short-term passion arisen from theinappropriate words or conducts of the victim, self-control abates, and commits criminal actsat the time or very close to the time of inappropriate words or behavior, and is punishedleniently by the criminal legislation. As a common and special crime, crime of passion hasperfect provisions in the criminal law both in civil law countries and common law countries,and the theoretical study has matured. But in our criminal law there is no clearly provision,the theoretical study hasn’t became system, resulting in unfair application of criminal law andother issues when dealing with crimes of passion in judicial practice. Seen, our study for thecrime of passion has to be strengthened in order to better guide the judicial practice.In this paper, the author takes Jia Mou intentional homicide as an example, analyzes thetheory and liability issues of crime of passion in order to benefit our judicial practice andlegislation improvement. In addition to introduction, the contents of this paper have followingfive parts:Part Ⅰ: Cause of action: Jia Mou intentional homicidePart Ⅱ: Case description, including the background, causes, development process and thefinal results. of Jia Mou intentional homicide.Part Ⅲ: Views of the prosecution and the defense and the verdict. in the trial, theprosecutor consider Jia Mou crime is extremely bad, the consequences are extremely seriousand should be severely punished according to law; the defense argue Jia Mou is passionkilling in the unbearable situation, belongs to the crime of passion, and ask the court for alighter punishment. The focus of the dispute is whether Jia Mou is a crime of passion, andwhether she can be given a lighter punishment. In the judgment, the court of first instancedoesn’t support the defense advice of passion killing, judges the accused Jia Mou guilty ofintentional homicide crime, sentenced to death, deprived of political rights for life; the case onappeal, the court of second instance adopts the grounds of appeal and defense views ofpassion killing, judged the appellant Jia Mou guilty of intentional homicide crime, sentencedto death, suspended for two years, deprived of political rights for life.Part Ⅳ: Legal analysis. Firstly, discusses the concept of intentional homicide and thefour constituent elements, and thus found Jia Mou is guilty of intentional homicide. Secondly,elaborates the theoretical issues of crime of passion, and identifies Jia Mou belongs to crime of passion with the use of these theoretical analysis. Among the theoretical issues of crime ofpassion, combs some concepts, and definite crime of passion at the sense of criminal law; listsfive characteristics of crime of passion and four categories; summarizes the composition ofcrime of passion, essential elements and differences with other related concepts; thendetermines Jia Mou belongs to crime of passion using the original "three-step". Finally,analyzes the criminal responsibility for crime of passion theoretically and draw that Jia Moushould be lighter punished. Specifically, proposed the legal basis of the criminalresponsibility from the criminal duty level, capacity of criminal responsibility level, andoffence form of crime of passion level,Raises the principle of lenient punishment for crime ofpassion from the behavior,the victim and society, and derives Jia Mou should be lighterpunished using this principle.Part Ⅴ: Conclusion. Comparing with foreign criminal laws and contrasting the shortageof our criminal law, proposes legislative suggestions for improvement at the form ofamendment in article234Th of the criminal law that expressly provide crime of passion fromcause element, mental element, object element, time element, charge element, and raisediscretionary mitigating circumstance to statutory mitigating circumstance.