Study On The Penalty Discretion To Homicide Cases Of Victims Of Domestic Violence

Currently, the domestic violence incidents occur frequently in our country,which cause a criminal case implemented by victims of domestic violence after another in which a large number of cases of intentional homicide are shocking.These crimes are different from the ordinary intentional homicide in both of the cause of the case and the social harmfulness.This paper aims to find out the problems in the course of penalty discretion of intentional homicide cases of domestic violence victims and puts forward some corresponding suggestions to realize the justice of sentencing,what based on the analysis of the 127 homicide cases and related literature.The paper consists of four parts except the epilogue, which approximately contains more than thirty-four thousand words.The first part, introduction.Firstly,clarify the research background of this article according to the situation of crime by victims of domestic violence and the relevant legislative and judicial and academic status in China.Then introduce the object of study, especially the meaning of domestic violence.At last, this part briefly describes the research methods used in this article and the theoretical and practical significance of the study.The second part,the empirical analysis of the penalty discretion to homicide cases of victims of domestic violence.This part is the main body of the article.First,state the general situation of the application of penalties from the aspects of the types of punishment, the distribution of the sentence,the application of non-custodial penalty and death penalty.Then select some of common legal circumstances and other discretionary circumstances of sentencing in cases for analysis.Among them,the legal circumstances mainly include surrender,accessory in common crime, limited criminal responsibility and criminal attempt,the discretionary circumstances mainly include the victim's fault, compensation and the victim's understanding for liberal punishment as well as some circumstances for severe punishment such as the target of crime and the consequences of crimes.On this basis,carry on the comprehensive analysis of legal and discretionary circumstances of sentencing.In addition, the public opinion affects the penalty discretion of such cases to a large extent.The third part,the analysis of problems of the penalty discretion to homicide cases of victims of domestic violence.It is not difficult to find that there are some obvious problems in current penalty discretion to homicide cases of victims of domestic violence through empirical analysis.First,sentencing standards are not uniform so that the differences in the severity of the penalty is too large.Second,the penalty is too severe and does not fit the crime on the whole.Third,the penalty discretion activity is deeply affected by the public opinion.And fourth,the judges are not consistent with each other in some of the concepts related to the circumstances of sentencing.The fourth part,suggestions of improvement for the penalty discretion to homicide cases of victims of domestic violence.For tackling above problems, this paper provides some suggestions both from the macro level and micro level.At the macro, the sentencing guidance of light punishment and uniform standard of sentencing should be established.In this process, we need to give full play to the role of judicial interpretation and case guidance system.At the micro,the victim's fault should be changed into legal circumstances of sentencing.Moreover,further implementation of crime measurement pleading as well as normative introduction mechanism system of the public opinion is also necessary.