What is a crime and its elements? Subjective and objective signs and their totality, established by the criminal law, which characterize a criminal act dangerous to society, determine the main meaning. The corpus delicti serves as the basis for criminal liability. The criminal legislation of the Russian Federation does not disclose the concept itself, however, it is widely used by investigative and judicial practice, legal theory, the Code of Criminal Procedure and the Criminal Code.
Elements and their meaning
The corpus delicti consists of only four elements:
a) the object of the crime against which the encroachment is directed (benefits, values, social relations that should be protected by the criminal law);
b) the objective side (that is, the dangerous act itself, its external side, the consequences dangerous for society and the obvious connection between the crime and the consequences; tools, method, means, time, situation, place where the crime was committed);
c) the subjective side (that is, what is inside the committed crime: mental state, attitudeoffender to the crime and its consequences: intent or negligence, purpose and motive, emotional state at the time of the act);
d) the subject of the crime (a sane person of the age of criminal responsibility).
For the conduct of any type of legal activity, each of the above elements is of decisive importance.
The corpus delicti also has signs that characterize these elements, there are also four groups of them:
a) those features that characterize the object, the subject of the crime and the victim;
b) characteristics of the objective side (act and consequences of the crime, causal relationship established between them, time, situation, means, method, tools and place);
c) the subjective side also has its own signs: guilt, motive, emotions, purpose;
d) characteristics of the subject (the sanity of an individual, the presence of an age at which criminal liability is possible).
The signs of each of the four elements are also of fundamental importance. The corpus delicti has mandatory and optional elements.
Compulsory and optional
Required elements must be available, and the absence of at least one of them means a complete lack of composition. The value of the mandatory elements of a crime, including their objective side, should include:
- Object of crime.
- Inaction or action, harmful consequences, directlyassociated with inaction or action, and the connections must be causal.
- Regarding the subject, the elements must have signs of a physically sane person and a certain age of him.
- Guilt as intent or negligence.
The significance of the elements of a crime is enormous, only they can determine the eligibility of criminal prosecution.
Optional elements are needed to construct elements of a crime as additional to the main ones, they can become mandatory for the investigated composition and optional for the rest. For example:
a) regarding the object: victim and objects;
b) from the objective side - place, situation, time, method, tools;
c) with respect to the subject - a special subject;
d) on the subjective side - emotional state, goal and motive.
The significance of the signs of a crime is truly great, since their presence will be the only argument for criminal liability.
Classification: degrees of generality and public danger
The components of the crime differ significantly from each other, they can also be divided into four parts according to similar features. It is with the accuracy of the definitions that the meaning of the corpus delicti is clarified. Their types are as follows.
1. The degree of commonality in the systemic features of crimes: general, generic, specific and specific compositions.
- The first one consists of a set of features and elements that are present in all compositions, theycriminal acts are characterized.
- The second is the generalization of the characteristics of identical crimes, which indicates the signs inherent in a group of attacks of the same section of the Criminal Code.
- The third composition is a legislative description of the crimes of certain groups.
- Fourth - the cumulative signs of a crime of a specific norm of criminal law.
2. The degree of public danger of the crime under investigation indicates the main, privileged and qualified compositions.
- The first one - the main one - contains the full set of basic (mandatory) subjective and objective features of this composition, where the crime is clearly distinguishable and does not contain any aggravating or mitigating circumstances.
- The second composition is privileged, that is, it contains mitigating signs that indicate a lesser danger to society of this act and serve as the basis for reducing the amount of punishment compared to punishments for crimes of the main composition.
- A qualified offense is an act with aggravating circumstances, supplemented by specific signs of a crime that indicate a greater danger to society of this act, and therefore entail a more severe punishment compared to the punishment of the main offense.
The signs of the first two types show how great the significance of the crime. Their types accurately delineate the degree of punishment for the crimes committed.
Classification:way of description and design features
There are three types of ways to describe elements of crimes in laws: simple, complex and alternative. The first composition gives all subjective and objective signs once, the complex contains additional signs or elements in quantitative terms, the alternative composition is a kind of complex, and its peculiarity is that there is an indication of options for a criminal act or method of action that are all at the same time or each separately determine the composition of the crime. Thus, one or another meaning of the objective signs of a crime is manifested.
Features of the construction of the features of the object and its objective side - at the moment of completion, the compositions can be material, formal or truncated. In the first compositions, along with the act, the sign of the crime is accompanied by consequences without fail, and the crimes themselves can be considered completed as soon as the consequences dangerous for society, provided for by laws, occur. The formal composition has an indication of a purely dangerous action or inaction for society, which serves as a basis for liability, and it does not depend on the onset of the consequences of the act. The truncated corpus delicti (concept, meaning, signs) has such a construction, in which the crime is considered completed at an earlier stage - from the moment the act was committed, from the attempt or from the preparation for a criminally punishable act, and this does not depend on the completion of the plan.
Definitions
Category of corpus delicti with veryFor a long time it was used exceptionally widely in practice, but the criminal law did not use this definition until very recently. The Criminal Code of the Russian Federation finally fixed the decisive role of such a concept, although it did not give a clear definition. But this gap was filled by the theory of law.
So, the corpus delicti are the subjective and objective elements (signs) that are provided in the hypotheses and dispositions of the criminal legal norm and characterize a specific socially dangerous act as a crime, subjective and objective elements (signs) that appear in the system. Here is the main definition: a system in which the elements (signs) are the meaning of the corpus delicti. It has already been indicated above that there are four subsystems in the composition of the crime: the object and its objective side, the subject and its subjective side. The significance of the elements of the crime is that all of them are the basis for criminal liability. If at least one element is missing, no criminal liability is foreseen. For example, if a crime was committed by an insane person, this is the absence of a subject of the crime.
Concept of legislation
Legislatively formulated in the Criminal Code, the crimes are based on the study of existing situations and the commission of certain actions of people who began to show upward trends, are undesirable and harmful from the point of view of the public. The criminal law meaning of the corpus delicti is a code that is adequately built and correctly reflects the entire systemrelations that develop in society, their distortions are especially dangerous, hindering socially useful activities and undermining justice.
The legislator is like a natural scientist who does not produce laws and does not invent them, but only formulates them, who tries to express in conscious laws internal laws relating to spiritual relations. So the meaning of the corpus delicti in criminal law is expressed in the Criminal Code (Special Part), where one crime can be distinguished from another. For example, theft from extortion, robbery from hooliganism are distinguished only by different signs of the elements of these crimes.
In Russia
First, a little about Roman and English law. In ancient Rome, theft was understood as a violated property right, including an unpaid debt. English criminal law considers theft to be a variety of ways to encroach on someone else's property, even if a person appropriated something found or cheated with electricity. And in Russia, criminal law contains specific elements of crimes, the list of which is exhaustive.
And this means that only behavior that matches the characteristics of this particular composition can be criminally punished and recognized as a crime. The legal meanings of the corpus delicti in the Criminal Code are not reflected in the form of all the actual signs in a row, but the most significant and typical subjective and objective signs, which together characterize this act as socially dangerous.
Unfinished and finishedoffenses
Separate articles (Special Part of the Criminal Code) describe the signs of purely completed offenses that the perpetrators committed together with co-perpetrators or alone. However, the General Part of the Criminal Code contains provisions on unfinished crimes, which include preparation or attempted crime.
The significance of the subjective side of the corpus delicti lies in the fact that the General Part describes the signs of both individual and common to all crimes. When a person performed, for example, the functions of an instigator, organizer or accomplice and did not personally perform the actions of a crime, then the deed is considered the composition of the organization, incitement or complicity. Each criminal step has corresponding signs.
Any crime can be characterized by a variety of subjective and objective signs, features and features inherent only to it. Articles of the Criminal Code (Special Part) indicate only the most stable elements in structure and their constituent features: the object, the sides of the criminal act - both subjective and objective, after which the act throughout the system is defined or not defined as a crime. The significance of the objective side of the corpus delicti is important precisely because it considers inaction or action, a consequence dangerous for society, circumstances of place and time, causal relationships, circumstances, means and methods, tools in the commission of a crime - that is, the signs that determine the composition.
Model
Only generalizing inherent in each compositioncrimes are persistent signs, it is possible to create a kind of scientific abstraction that makes up a general concept that includes the above signs, all four of their groups (also called the sides of the composition or its elements). They characterize the object, its objective side, the subjective side and the subject of the crime. This model (concept) is usually used in educational institutions and is of great methodological importance. Since each side of the corpus delicti has its own specific features, each corpus delicti is specific and unique in its own way.
In the general corpus delicti there are necessary, that is, obligatory for any composition, signs, as well as a number of individual, uncharacteristic, optional ones. For example, the place, time, means, instrument, methods of committing a crime, its consequences and the situation in which it all happens are far from every time included in a certain corpus delicti, but inaction and action are an objective side, and its signs are simply required for every composition. However, the components of crimes do not specifically spell out mandatory or optional features in the Criminal Code (Special Part). Signs of such a plan are evaluative or formally defined, since they are described by verbal means - specific legal terms, concepts, well-known words.
Examples
There are several criteria, that is, the grounds on which the elements of crimes are classified in the Criminal Code (Special Part). QuantityThe obligatory features of the objective side and the construction of the corpus delicti indicate the subsection: the material is the composition, formal or truncated. An example of a material offense: negligence (Part 1 of Article 293 of the Criminal Code), in which there are no aggravating circumstances. Here it is necessary to establish as a criminal consequence the damage caused on a large scale, a significant violation of the legitimate interests and rights of organizations or citizens or the interests of society, the state, protected by law. If aggravating circumstances are present (part 2 of the same article), this means causing grievous bodily harm or even death of a person caused by negligence. If there are especially aggravating circumstances (part 3 of the same article) - causing death to two or more people through negligence.
An example of a formal composition does not indicate specific consequences; inaction or action provided for by the article of the Criminal Code will suffice here. Consequences are usually outside this corpus delicti, and if they do exist, they are taken into account when sentencing. For example, the composition of obstruction of the right to vote or interference in the work of election commissions. Truncated compositions are a kind of formal, just the end of the act is transferred to the early stage of the crime. For example, robbery (Article 162) is formulated as an attack for the purpose of stealing property, where violence is used that is dangerous to he alth and life, or the threat of such violence. Robbery is a completed crime from the first moment of the attack. The end of it was postponed by law to the time of the assassination attempt,when the possession of another's property has not yet taken place.
