Research On The Matching Of Legal Interests And Sentencing For The Crime Of Illegal Hunting, Killing Of Precious And Endangered Wild Animals

The protection of wildlife resources is an issue that should be paid attention to all over the world.At the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China,the protection of wildlife resources was emphasized.In recent years,people have put a high premium on the crimes related to wildlife.There are often heated debates among the public about the judgments of such crimes,which are considered as improper sentencing.The first paragraph of article 341 of the Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China stipulates the crime of illegally hunting and catching,killing precious and endangered wild animals,which plays an important role in the protection of precious and endangered wildlife.However,there are still some controversial issues in judicial practice.Based on the theory of wildlife protection in environmental law,combined with the matching rules of legal interests and sentencing in criminal law theory,this paper finds the reasons for the problems in judicial practice through case analysis and literature research.From the study and comparison of typical cases,it is found that the main problem of the crime of illegal hunting and catching,killing precious and endangered wild animals in judicial practice is that the the infringing legal benefits of the crime are unclear,so it can not meet the standards of crime and punishment.First of all,on the basis of many domestic scholars' theories,this paper establishes that the legal interest protected in the crime of illegal hunting and killing of precious and endangered wildlife should be wildlife resources.Secondly,through the combined research of environmental law and criminal law theory,the specific rules that match the legal benefits and sentencing in this crime are obtained.Sentencing,while abiding by Principle of legality,should also be based on substantive interpretation to ensure that the range of sentencing matches the specific crime content of the perpetrator.The justice of sentencing depends on the judgment of legal interest,and the decision of sentencing should be based on the degree of infringement of legal interest,so as to ensure the objective justice of legal effect.Based on the in-depth analysis of the legal interests of the crime,the study found that there are four urgent problems to be solved in the judicial practice:1.The definition of wildlife is unreasonable;2.The distinction between "hunting" and“killing”behavior is not clear;3.The number of wildlife is improper.Based on the analysis of the similarities and differences between the artificially bred wild animals and the wild animals living in the wild,this paper holds that some artificial populations that have formed scale are no longer within the scope of the wild animals to be protected by the criminal law;through the analysis of the differences between hunting and killing,it is believed that sometimes the infringement of hunting and killing on legal interests is not equal and should be treated differently;for the unreasonable calculation methods of“serious circumstances”and“especially serious circumstances”in the judicial interpretation of wildlife cases,effective modification suggestions are put forward.