Judicial Application Of Lethal Theft

The amendment of criminal code (8) has entered into force in May1,2011. And ithas revised the theft provisions of the existing criminal code. Now the new theftprovision provides: Whoever steals a relatively large amount of public or privateproperty, commits thefts many times, commits a burglary or carries a lethal weapon tosteal or pick pockets shall be sentenced to imprisonment of not more than3years,criminal detention or control and/or a fine. These three actions above are directlyincorporated into the criminal law, and there is a big difference to the legislativemodel with only the amount of the theft conviction. Especially about the lethal theftof provisions, there are many places on the standard patterns of crime, punishmentranges and competing with other counts of criminal law which are not clearly.Morethan1year have passed away since the amendment of criminal code (8) be published,we can still find some unproper articles in the practices of jurisdiction by collection ofcases and analysis on them. Though judicial interpretation of the supreme people’scourt about theft in2013refreshed the concepts of “the theft with weapon”, but thereare still necessities to refine connotation and denotation of this crime. By analysis ofthe goal of incrimination, settlement of criminal laws and comparation between thenew and old ones, I propose some feasible plans on the jurisdiction exercises. I wishthem would get some real bonus like what they were expected in the amendment ofcriminal code (8).This paper divides into4chapters. The first chapter has mainly introduced the goal and background of incrimination, and the rationality and necessity of criminallegislation.It will provide a guidance for the incrimination standards. The secondchapter refines the incrimination standards of the theft with weapon. I hold the viewfirmly that not all the behaviors on stealing with weapon should be considered ascrime, with the room reserved by provisos in criminal law article13.The third chapteranalyzes the judicial cognizance on “weapon” and “carrying” and explicit the scope ofweapons based on the lasted judicial interpretation. The forth chapter compares thetheft with weapon with robbery and snatch with weapon especially when these articlesare overlapped. And discusses about transformation and aggravation between theseabove.