On The Victim’s Fault Under The View Of Criminal Law

As proved by empirical studies,victim’s fault has been one of the common circumstance for sentencing in the judicial practice in China.However,in the process of its application,the problem of low applicable rate 、 inconsistent standards of identification 、 diversified expression 、 optional application are still existing.The reasons can be mainly distributed to the lack of explicit legal terms and the specific standards of conviction.Meanwhile,the status of victim’s fault being discretionary sentencing circumstances is not equally matched to its high significance in reality at present.Based on these current situations,this dissertation is meant to discuss the legal definition of victim’s fault as well as its legalization,which can hopefully promote the realization of the balance of conviction and sentencing.This dissertation is divided into three chapters.In the first chapter,the legal definition of victim and the victim’s fault,the classification of victim’s fault,and the theoretic basement of victim’s fault’s influence on criminal responsibility are presented briefly.What’s more,the definition of victim is compared in perspective of the science criminal law and criminology.In this paper,the victim is defined as “the nature people whose own interests had been damage directly because of the defendant’s criminal behavior”.As to the definition of victim,I think its objectivity is consistent with its subjectivity.That means the unveil of victim’s essence is the only necessity,the presentation of its each classification is not necessary.It’s appropriate to defined it as “because the victim out of bound topromote the role should be punished by criminal law negative improper behavior with intentional or grossly negligent implementation of crime and the consequences”.Meanwhile,define the theoretical foundation of victim’s fault influencing criminal responsibility by introducing the theory of responsibility sharing、the theory of lower degree of condemn、the theory of anticipated possibility and the theory of conditional rights.The second chapter presented and analyzed the composed conditions of victim’s fault in detail.This chapter is developed in four perspectives including the body condition,subjective condition,behavioral condition and relating condition.The conditions are analyzed and illustrated with some relating cases presented in“Reference to Criminal Trail”.To be more specific,I believe the body condition should be only limited to nature people himself rather than unit or other people who has direct beneficial relationship with the victim.Besides,teenagers who are under age of 16 years old can be the body condition of victim’s fault.Then about the subjective condition of the conviction of victim’s fault,victim’s behaviors must be conducted out of intentional or unintentional psychological status,and it should be targeted at the faulty behaviors conducted by victims himself instead of the criminal behaviors or results of criminal.When it comes to the behavioral conditions,first of all,the fault behaviors must be the behaviors acted physically including illegal behaviors and some other behaviors against morality severely.Besides,such behaviors must infringe the legal rights or legitimate interests not illegal rights,and some certain requirements must be satisfied.As for the relating conditions of victim’s fault,the causal relationship and the close relationship of time should be involved.The third chapter organized the 100 criminal cases relating to victim’s fault which happened in 2018.It analyzed if the victims’ behaviors are convicted to be fault.Besides,the nature of the fault、the distribution of charges、the type of behavior and whether the referee documents have detailed expatiations are also presented in this chapter.The analysis reveals that the legal practice of victim’s fault is facing the problem of low applicable rate、inconsistent standards of identification、diversifiedexpression 、 optional application.Then,it discussed the necessity and the important significance of the legalization victim’s fault.It introduced the current regulations of victim’s fault in regions and countries of continental law system and Anglo-American law system.Meanwhile,it listed the rare terms relating to victim’s fault,and the inadequacy of its legalization in our country.Finally,some assumptions and suggestions of the legalization of victim’s fault are proposed.It is believed between Article 21 and Article 22,a clause could be added.That is “when the victim has fault,the punishment towards defendant could be reduced”;and in the specific provisions of Chinese criminal law,some specific clauses can be fixed on the crime of intentional injury、the crime of intentional homicide、the crime of illegal detention、the crime of rape,where the victim’s faults happen commonly.Take the crime of intentional homicide as an example,the paragraph 2 should be added to Article 232 “when the victim’s faulty behavior makes the defendant conduct killing intentionally,the punishment could be reduced”.The conviction of victim’s fault in perspective of criminal significance could be regulated more detailed by means of corresponding judicial interpretations in the future.