In our society, impetus crimes are continuously increasing, which must not be confused with passionate crimes. Below we will dissect the differences and the relative legal consequences.
What is meant by “impetus“
It is defined “impetus“The fact of a crime committed with impulse, without the criminally relevant conduct be preceded by an adequate reflection. Usually, this crime is carried out in the wake of a strong feeling, such as that of anger fed towards the victim. Often confused with the passionate crime, in reality this criminal case of impetus can have various motivations.
The penal code defines as a criminal conduct relevant and sanctionable that behavior that has a series of elements inside, including the ability to understand and want. Many times we read in the press that following the Commission of heinous crimes or in any case of criminally relevant actions with extreme consequences of the victim on the victim, the inability to understand and want at the time of the commission of the crime is invoked; This is for the purpose of obtaining the impunity with respect to what is in place.
When a subject, who acts – precisely – of impetus, must be considered guilty and when, instead, his emotional state of the moment excludes cognition as well as the volition of his actions?
The demarcation line between what is criminally relevant and what is not is extremely subtle as well as difficult, since not univocally defined nor much coded. In fact, the law does not contemplate the impetus crime; In other words, there is no crime so entitled. Therefore, most of the time the judges make use of consultants – psychiatrists or forensic psychologists – in order to evaluate whether the subjects were able to understand and want at the time of the commission of the fact.
How the conduct of the agent is assessed
However, here opens a great theme that will be increasingly treated as well as debated in the classrooms and, in particular, I refer to the subjective element of the crime and its evaluation. In practice, the discriminant of the ability or inability of a subject must be subjected to an anterior scrutiny and, in particular, the conduct of the agent must be analyzed in the hearing as not only the inconvenience of the accomplished fact must be assessed, but, above all, if the aforementioned subject – when he committed it – had the ability to understand and want or if the same was completely absent or faded. In fact, from the judicial chronicles it has been developed in the judgments of the judges of all the degrees of judgment, up to the judges of the Court of Cassation, various types of willful misconduct.
Therefore, the strong -willed power of the subject, that is, the awareness of performing a certain anti -juridical action is no longer simply identified as generic or specific malice, but there are other forms of willful misconduct: the alternative willful misconduct, impetus, direct malice, indirect malice. On a legal level, this implies that not all impetus crimes are criminally irrelevant due to the lack of the subjective element; On the contrary, it will be a matter of demonstrating – case by case by reason of the concrete elements that connote the individual story – when the emotional state of the agent – who acts, repeats, impetus – is such as to exclude the prefiguration of the reprovable consequences of one’s conduct. Procedure that does not consist of an automatism for the mere fact of being a “impetus”, but which requires careful study – also through the help of professional figures such as psychologists and forensic psychiatrists and psychological clinical tests – in order to reach an objective conclusion, based on empirical data.
Therefore, it is mind that not everything that is animated by a sudden and unstoppable impulse is exempt from punitive responses, therefore, invoking the inability without any scientific element will certainly not lead to an acquittal of the accused.
Article created in collaboration with the Law Firm Stefano Grolla.
