“受过行政处罚入罪”规定之证成

2013年以来我国刑事司法解释有一明显趋势,即将行为人曾经受过行政处罚的事实作为定罪情节,纳入犯罪成立与否的考量之中。对这一现象,我国刑法学界多从刑事犯罪行为与行政违法行为"质"的差异,或者客观主义刑法观的角度出发予以否定。但是,在我国"定性+定量"的刑事立法模式下,刑事犯罪行为与行政违法行为以"量"的差异为主、质的差异为辅,行政违法性"量的累加"可以产生刑事违法性。"受过行政处罚入罪"的规定综合考虑了行为的客观危害程度和行为人的主观可谴责性程度,不仅不违反罪刑法定原则、禁止重复评价原则和责任主义原则等定罪时应坚持的一些基本原则,还有利于弥补劳动教养废除后的制度空白,调整我国"结果本位"的刑法结构,实现行政处罚与刑事处罚的有效衔接。     

合规视野下的企业刑事责任问题

在企业的刑事归责问题上,西方国家传统上遵循的是以企业员工的行为和主观过错推论企业行为和主观过错的原则。如今,这一归责方式正在受到普遍的质疑和挑战,一种建立在“组织责任”基础上的理论正在兴起,并为企业合规引入企业归责原则确立了理论上的依据。我国刑法所确立的单位犯罪制度,面临着单位犯罪与自然人犯罪“入罪标准不统一”“同罪不同罚”,单位所承担的刑事责任与行政责任难以保持均衡,以及认定单位主观意志较为困难等方面的问题。唯有建立“企业独立意志理论”,将单位视为一种独立的生命有机体,承认其具有实施独立行为和具有独立主观意志的能力,才能走出上述困境,并将企业合规融入单位归责原则之中。     

Psychopathy and Culpability: How Responsible Is the Psychopath for Criminal Wrongdoing?

Recent research into the psychological and neurobiological underpinnings of psychopathy has raised the question of whether, or to what degree, psychopaths should be considered morally and criminally responsible for their actions. In this article, we review the current empirical literature on psychopathy, focusing particularly on deficits in moral reasoning, and consider several potential conclusions that could be drawn based on this evidence. Our analysis of the empirical evidence on psychopathy suggests that while psychopaths do not meet the criteria for full criminal responsibility, they nonetheless retain some criminal responsibility. We conclude, by introducing the notion of rights as correlative, that even if psychopaths were to be fully nonresponsible, imposing some form of civil commitment would still be warranted.     

The Personal Nature of Individual Criminal Responsibility and the ICC Statute

By affirming criminal responsibility of the individual, theICC Statute recognizes a distinction from the internationalresponsibility of states, which is the basis of modern internationalcriminal law. The importance of the principle is evident notonly in the breadth and analytical nature of the provision dealingwith it, i.e. Article 25 of the Statute, but by its being placedin the part of the Statute devoted to the ‘General Principlesof Criminal Law’. After an introductory considerationof the context of the Article and of its general implications,this article analyses the contents of the regulation and thetype of responsibility outlined in it. The principle that emergescould be called the ‘personal nature’ of internationalcriminal responsibility. Although the general principles setout in the ICC Statute are rather rudimentary in comparisonwith what is to be found in the ‘General Part’ ofmost national criminal laws, the principle of personal responsibilityemerging from the Statute is nevertheless in the best traditionsof criminal law. It serves both as the foundation and as thelimitation of international criminal responsibility, so helpingto ensure that modern international criminal law is not a toolfor oppression but rather an instrument of justice.     

人格责任论对于刑事司法精神病鉴定的应用价值

目的探讨人格责任论和动机理论相结合的方法在精神障碍患者刑事责任能力鉴定中的价值。方法回顾性分析我机构2013年及2014年实施鉴定的101例精神障碍患者的刑事责任能力,分析指标包括:精神症状对人格基本特征的反映;作案动机;被鉴定人对违法行为的评价;刑事责任能力。结果不同的症状反映了人格整体性、一致性和特殊性的异常;当症状不同时,患者实施违法行为的动机也有现实和非现实的差异;人格整体性受损者不能正常和正确地评价违法行为,几乎全部人格一致性、特殊性受影响者能认识到行为的违法性;人格的完整性和一致性受影响者刑事责任能力不完全;人格特殊性受影响者为完全刑事责任能力。结论人格责任论与动机理论相结合应用于精神障碍患者的刑事责任能力鉴定,有实用的临床意义。以行为人作为行动者的同一性进行界定,辨别患者对行为是"不能控制"还是"不予控制",值得在精神病司法鉴定工作中推广应用。     

论转化犯立法的理论根据

转化犯是我国刑法理论对刑法中特有行为形式所作的理论概括,转化犯最大的立法价值在于它凸现了罪责刑均衡原则。基于转化犯是轻罪向重罪的单向转化,转化犯的法定性既缘于罪刑法定原则的要求,也是刑法规范作为裁判规范的属性使然。作为规范的表达方式,注意性规定的转化犯,其立法的理论根据缘于犯罪构成学说;而拟制性规定的转化犯,其立法的理论根据则基于法律拟制的正当性,即借助于法律拟制立法的正当性要求,拟制性规定的转化犯既可以弥补刑法条文的漏洞或缺陷,还可以满足刑法规范对实质正义的立法诉求。     

Biological factors and crime: implications for forensic psychiatry

To summarize, we can say that (1) Criminal behavior, especially chronic criminal behavior, seems to be partly genetically predisposed; (2) An important task at this point is to attempt to determine the biological factors which predispose people to crime; and (3) We have related some tentative initial steps being taken in the study of the autonomic nervous system as one possible heritable, biological basis for the failure of normal social learning forces in inhibiting criminal behavior. Early in this paper we discussed the tenability of asserting criminal responsibility on individuals whose criminal behavior has a partly genetic etiology. But this special consideration seems to set biological factors apart as being in some unique causal category. In fact, genetic, physiological, and biochemical factors are causal agents in the same sense as family, social class, or neighborhood factors. Of course, criminal behavior (like all other behavior) must be caused; one class of causal variables is the biological category. The legal doctrine of responsibility is not challenged by identifying biological factors as partially determining crime any more than it is by findings of social causation. Only in cases in which abnormal biological factors are exceptionally powerful influences might responsibility be challenged. Such cases will be quite rare.     

Who's flying the plane: serotonin levels, aggression and free will

The present paper addresses the philosophical problem raised by current causal neurochemical models of impulsive violence and aggression: to what extent can we hold violent criminal offenders responsible for their conduct if that conduct is the result of deterministic biochemical processes in the brain. This question is currently receiving a great deal of attention among neuroscientists, legal scholars and philosophers. We examine our current knowledge of neuroscience to assess the possible roles of deterministic factors which induce impulsive aggression, and the extent to which this behavior can be controlled by neural conditioning mechanisms. Neural conditioning mechanisms, we suggest, may underlie what we consider the basis of responsible (though not necessarily moral) behavior: the capacity to give and take reasons. The models we first examine are based in part upon the role played by the neurotransmitter, serotonin, in the regulation of violence and aggression. Collectively, these results would appear to argue in favor of the view that low brain serotonin levels induce impulsive aggression which overrides mechanisms related to rational decision making processes. We next present an account of responsibility as based on the capacity to exercise a certain kind of reason-responsive control over one's conduct. The problem with such accounts of responsibility, however, is that they fail to specify a neurobiological realization of such mechanisms of control. We present a neurobiological, and weakly determinist, framework for understanding how persons can exercise guidance control over their conduct. This framework is based upon classical conditioning of neurons in the prefrontal cortex that allow for a decision making mechanism that provides for prefrontal cortical control of the sites in the brain which express aggressive behavior that include the hypothalamus and midbrain periaqueductal gray. The authors support the view that, in many circumstances, neural conditioning mechanisms provide the basis for the control of human aggression in spite of the presence of brain serotonin levels that might otherwise favor the expression of impulsive aggressive behavior. Indeed if those neural conditioning mechanisms underlie the human capacity to exercise control, they may be the neural realization of reason-responsiveness generally.     

Communal response to criminal behavior in the kibbutz during periods of crisis

This research examines whether the situation of crisis which has been developing in the majority of secular kibbutzim since the eighties has influenced the attitudes of kibbutz members towards criminal behavior. Previously, the kibbutzim were accustomed to dealing with any deviant behavior in their midst, with the exception of serious crime, by means of their own internal control institutions. Our assumption is that there would be a greater tendency among members of kibbutzim in crisis, as compared to those in a situation of stability, to see criminal behavior as a disturbing, even threatening, social phenomenon, and to turn to outside agencies, such as the police. In order to examine this hypothesis, we selected 230 kibbutz members from six well-established secular kibbutzim in the center of the country, which differ from each other with regard to levels of crisis which in turn determined by means of specific economic and social criteria. Our findings show that criminal behavior is more prevalent in the kibbutz than the members themselves believe. The more stable the kibbutz, the more the members continue to rely on their own conventional methods of dealing with criminal behavior, while the more severe the crisis situation, the greater the tendency to pass the responsibility for the offender to outside agencies.     

论个人刑事责任原则在国际刑法中的体现

经过历史发展,个人刑事责任原则的观念逐渐形成,并体现在主要的国际性法律文件以及国际刑事审判活动中,成为国际刑法中的一项重要的基本原则。然而,鉴于多种因素的考量,目前权威国际刑法规范所规定的个人刑事责任原则只体现在自然人实施特定国际犯罪的情形中,并没有确认法人和国家的刑事责任主体地位。     

关于“教唆不满十八周岁的人犯罪的,应当从重处罚”的理解与适用

我国通说的刑法理论认为犯罪主体必须具有刑事责任能力,无刑事责任能力之人实施的危害行为不构成犯罪;同时,教唆不具有刑事责任能力之人实施"犯罪"构成间接正犯,对其也可以适用刑法第二十九条第一款的规定即从重处罚。这种观点一方面认为无刑事责任能力之人实施的危害行为不构成犯罪,另一方在他人教唆的情况下,无刑事责任能力之人却又可以实施"犯罪,"这种解释显然无法成立。     

我国刑事赔偿制度归责原则反思

对刑事赔偿的归责原则,我国有学者主张适用过错责任原则,有学者主张适用违法责任原则,还有学者主张适用结果责任原则,等等。这些原则在解决应否赔偿的问题上都存在难以克服的缺陷。之所以如此,主要是因为刑事赔偿制度与一般侵权赔偿制度有重大区别,刑事赔偿程序由国家向受害者支付赔偿费用的程序以及追偿程序两大程序构成,这两大程序应适用不同的归责原则:前一程序应适用结果责任原则,后一程序应适用过错责任原则。我国国家赔偿法对刑事赔偿归责原则的规定存在严重缺陷,应当进行彻底重构。     

中德(日)量刑基准之比较研究

在德日刑法中,受责任主义的规制,责任为刑罚规定了前提和界限,基于预防方面的考量不能僭越责任程度所决定的刑罚。相比之下,中国现行刑法的量刑基准理论与之虽貌合实神离,因为作为其量刑基准的刑事责任的大小是社会危害性与人身危险性评价的加权之值。我国现行量刑基准理论实际上是现行刑事责任理论体系的逻辑延伸。欲求我国量刑基准理论在逻辑上更为科学合理,在价值取向上彰显现代刑法之人权保障机能,则必以改善现行刑事责任理论体系为前提。改造的重点在于纠正将责任评价与刑罚量定混为一体的做法,将之予以分离,使之各得其所。作为犯罪后果负担的刑事责任只能由犯罪的严重性程度来决定,人身危险性因素不能用于评价犯罪与刑事责任,而只能在刑罚最后量定时做有利于犯罪人更新改造之缓和考量。     

Criminal and Procedural Fairness: Some Challenges to the Presumption of Innocence

The presumption of innocence (POI) requires all judges, juries, and other officials in a trial, to presume and treat any accused of criminal wrongdoing as innocent, until he or she is proven guilty. Although a POI lacks an authoritative definition, this overarching principle of procedural fairness is so robust and vital for the exercise of legal power in matters of criminal law that one rarely finds anyone questioning its standing. In this article I examine the rationale behind the POI from a different perspective. The basic assumption is that this procedural standard captures the tenor of a broader principle which seeks to ensure fairness in criminal proceedings as well as in criminal law doctrine. I argue that honouring a principle of fairness is not exclusively a matter of criminal procedural law but also something that is deeply rooted in other areas of criminal law doctrine. Hence: not maintaining a principle of fairness in criminal law doctrine could lead to the POI being compromised or even undermined. In the article, I draw attention to three areas in which I believe that criminal law policies threaten a principle of fairness: criminalising remote harm, doctrine of ignorance of law and inversed presumptions of guilt. My conclusion is that some solutions to so called doctrinal problems in criminal law, are questionable and their practical consequences (on a general level) are, at least partially, equal to treating an individual (in a trial) as guilty for something for which he or she ought not to be accountable. Hence: gaining the support of a POI could thus work as principle for keeping the use of criminal law moderate and in accordance with a principle of fairness.     

Neuroscientific and behavioral genetic information in criminal cases in the Netherlands

In this contribution an empirical approach is used to gain more insight into the relationship between neuroscience and criminal law. The focus is on case law in the Netherlands. Neuroscientific information and techniques have found their way into the courts of the Netherlands. Furthermore, following an Italian case in which a mentally ill offender received a penalty reduction in part because of a ‘genetic vulnerability for impulsive aggression’, the expectation was expressed that such ‘genetic defenses’ would appear in the Netherlands too. To assess how neuroscientific and behavioral genetic information are used in criminal justice practice in the Netherlands, we systematically collect Dutch criminal cases in which neuroscientific or behavioral genetic information is introduced. Data and case law examples are presented and discussed. Although cases are diverse, several themes appear, such as prefrontal brain damage in relation to criminal responsibility and recidivism risk, and divergent views of the implications of neurobiological knowledge about addiction for judging criminal responsibility. Whereas in the international ‘neurolaw literature’ the emphasis is often on imaging techniques, the Dutch findings also illustrate the role of neuropsychological methods in criminal cases. Finally, there appears to be a clear need of practice oriented instruments and guidelines.     

论不追究刑事责任

我国《刑法》和《刑事诉讼法》用三个不同的概念对不追究刑事责任作了规定。《刑事诉讼法》第16条所规定的不追究刑事责任可分为三种情形,但《刑法》第201条第4款中规定的不予追究刑事责任并未归属其中。现行刑事立法在不追究刑事责任的规定中概念不统一,《刑法》在规定不追究刑事责任方面不当缺位,已有的规定也较为粗糙,《刑事诉讼法》缺乏特赦令执行的程序规定,我们有必要完善不追究刑事责任的刑事立法规定。     

刑事和解借鉴之分析

刑事和解是一种新型的刑事司法关系。我国借鉴刑事和解制度的依据在于刑事和解可以更好地解决特定类型刑事案件中行为人的责任。借鉴刑事和解制度并不会弱化预防功能,也不违背法律面前人人平等的原则。目前借鉴刑事和解制度有利因素与不利因素并存,但不利因素并非刑事和解自身的弊端。应该以既积极又谨慎的态度看待刑事和解借鉴。     

英美刑法中的犯意转移理论

犯意转移原则用以解决D意图杀死V1而实际杀死了v2等类似情形之责任认定问题。该原则起源于16世纪的英国普通法,对英美刑法司法及立法产生了广泛、深远的影响,但亦面临着实践窘境及学者的猛烈批判。作为事实错误不免责之理论,犯意转移原则是建立在抽象故意观基础上的刑罚政策选择。在打击错误的场合,犯意转移原则对于D的责任认定并不妥适,因为它忽视了刑事责任的认定在主观与客观、事实与规范、自由与强制之间的博弈。     

论平等在刑法中的地位

刑法第四条就适用刑法人人平等作了明确的规定,但关于平等在刑法中处于什么位置一直备受争议。关于平等在刑法中的地位,主要涉及三个问题,即:平等是法律原则还是法律权利;平等是否能为刑法的基本原则;刑法平等原则与罪刑法定原则、罪责刑相适应原则之间是什么关系。     

论共同犯罪人与身份

犯罪是一种特定的危害社会行为的符号,是反社会的行为方式之一,不仅仅是一种社会现象,也是一种法律现象,该行为包括刑事违法性的法律内容与严重社会危害性、应受刑罚处罚性的社会内容。在形形色色的犯罪现象中,对某些犯罪而言,其犯罪主体除须具备一般刑事立法中要求的具有自然人与刑事责任能力两个基本条件外,特殊身份作为主体的内容,影响甚至决定着行为人的刑事责任有无及大小。身份与行为人刑事责任的关系,决定着其在特定犯罪构成中的地位,特别是涉及共同犯罪中的身份犯问题,身份对共同犯罪的定性及各共同犯罪人刑事责任的承担产生重要的影响。因此,身份问题是现代刑法理论中一个不容忽视的问题,尤其是与有着“绝望之章”称谓的共犯论相交叉时。本文拟就共同犯罪人与身份的相关问题略述管见。