1. Legal grounds

Article 128 Penal Code 2015, amendments and supplements in 2017

2. Crime of unintentionally causing death

2.1. Concept

Accidentally causing death is the case where the offender foresees his/her acts may cause fatal consequences but believes that such consequences do not occur or does not foresee his/her acts are likely to cause fatal consequences. people though must foresee and be able to foresee.

Accordingly, Article 128 of the Penal Code 2015 provides for the crime of unintentionally causing death as follows:

“Article 128. Crime of unintentionally causing death

1. Those who unintentionally cause death shall be sentenced to non-custodial reform for up to 03 years or a prison term of between 01 and 05 years.

2. Committing the crime and causing death of 2 or more people, the offenders shall be sentenced to between 3 and 10 years of imprisonment.”

2.2. Constituting the crime of unintentionally causing death

– Subject: A person who is capable of taking criminal responsibility.

– Objects: Human right to life.

– Subjective side: The person who commits the offense under the unintentional fault includes: unintentionally due to negligence and unintentionally due to overconfidence.

+ Causing death by accident due to overconfidence is the case where the offender foresees that his/her behavior may cause harmful consequences to society but thinks that such consequences will not occur or can be prevented. (Clause 1, Article 11 of the Penal Code).

+ Causing death due to negligent fault is a case where the offender does not foresee that his/her acts may cause harmful consequences to society, although such consequences must be foreseen and can be foreseen. Clause 2, Article 11 of the Penal Code).

– The objective side: The act of unintentionally causing death is expressed in the form of action or inaction. Deadly consequences are a mandatory sign for the crime of unintentionally causing death.

Pursuant to the provisions of Article 128 of the 2015 Penal Code, amended and supplemented in 2017, the crime of unintentionally causing death, specifically:

– Accidentally causing death of 01 person: shall be sentenced to non-custodial reform for up to 3 years or imprisonment from 1 to 5 years.

– Accidentally causing the death of 02 or more people: shall be sentenced to between 3 and 10 years of imprisonment.

3. Questions and answers about the crime of unintentionally causing death

Situation: X and P invite each other to hunt wild animals, when they go, X and P each carry a homemade shotgun. The two people agree that whoever detects a wild animal, before shooting, will whistle 3 times, if there is no response, they will shoot. Then they parted ways. When X has gone about 200 meters, X hears a sound, about 25 meters away from X. X whistled 3 times but didn’t hear any response from P. X turned on the light in the direction of the sound, saw that the animal’s eyes were reflected, so he aimed to shoot at the animal. After that, X ran to find P was hit but not completely dead. X rushed P to the local dispensary for emergency treatment, but P died on the way.

Based on the given situation, X commits the crime of “inadvertently causing death” according to Clause 1, Article 128 of the Penal Code 2015 (amended and supplemented 2017): “Whoever unintentionally causes death shall be subject to non-custodial reform. up to 03 years or imprisonment from 01 to 05 years”.

Legal signs (constituting the crime of unintentionally causing death):

– The object of the crime

The object of the crime of unintentionally causing death is a moral right, which is one of the most important objects protected by criminal law. It is the right to life, the right to respect and protection of life. The subjects of this crime are those who have the right to respect and protect their lives. Those are living people, who are existing in the objective world as human beings – natural and social entities. Thus, in the above situation X deprives P of life, infringing upon the personal relationship protected by criminal law.

– The objective side of the crime

+ Objective behavior of the crime: The offender has a violation of safety rules. These are the rules to ensure the safety of human life and health. Those rules belong to many different fields, may have been normalized or may be common rules of social behavior that have become living habits, everyone knows and acknowledges. In the above situation, X and P invite each other to hunt wild animals and the two agree that whoever detects wild animals, before shooting, will whistle 3 times, if there is no response, they will shoot. Then X goes up the hill and P goes down the ravine. And when X heard a sound, X whistled 3 times but didn’t hear any response from P. X turned on the light in the direction of the sound, saw the eyes of the animal reflected, so he aimed at the animal. After that, X brought a gun and ran to find that P was hit but not completely dead. X rushed P to the local dispensary but P died on the way to the emergency room. Thus, X’s behavior due to not carefully scrutinizing while hunting should have strayed bullets into P’s body, causing P to die.

+ Consequences of crime: The above violation must have caused fatal consequences. This consequence is a mandatory sign of Constituency of Crime. In the above situation, X’s behavior caused P’s death.

+ The causal relationship between the behavior and the consequences of the crime: The causal relationship between the violation and the consequences that have occurred is a mandatory sign of the crime. Violators shall only bear criminal liability for the fatal consequences that have occurred, if their violations have caused these consequences or, in other words, between their violations and the fatal consequences. QNQ with each other. In the above situation, P’s fatal consequences are caused by X’s behavior. It was X aiming to shoot at the beast but shot at P, resulting in P’s death, so the cause of P’s death was X’s shooting behavior  at ​​P.

– The subjective side of crime

In this case, X commits the crime of negligent homicide with the fault of unintentional overconfidence. Because X, although seeing that his act may have fatal consequences, thinks that such consequences will not happen, he still performs and has caused such deadly consequences.

+ Regarding reason: X perceives the dangerous nature of his behavior to society, which is reflected in the foresight of the potentially deadly consequences of his actions, but at the same time thinks that such consequences not occur. Thus, the foresight of the fatal consequences here is really just a consideration of the possibility of that consequence occurring or not and the offender’s outcome has ruled out the possibility of that consequence occurring.

+ About the will: X does not want his behavior to cause the death of P, which is reflected in the fact that X’s unwelcome consequences are associated with the fact that X has ruled out the possibility of consequences occurring. X considered, calculated before acting, shown that X whistled as agreed with P and only when he did not hear any response from P, X aimed to shoot towards the eyes of the beast but As a result, he shot and killed P. And when X came running with a gun, finding that P was hit by a bullet but not completely dead, X rushed to take P to the local dispensary for emergency treatment, but P died on the way. This proves that X does not want deadly consequences to happen. Thus, the error form of X in the above case is the error of inadvertent overconfidence.

– The subject of the crime

The subject of the crime of unintentionally causing death is an ordinary subject who has criminal liability capacity and reaches the legal age. Within the framework of the given situation, a person has full criminal liability capacity and reaches the legal age.

From the analysis of the above-mentioned criminal constituents, it is found that there are enough grounds to conclude that X committed the crime of unintentionally causing death according to Clause 1, Article 128 of the Penal Code 2015 (amended and supplemented 2017).

Above is Khoa Tin‘s advice on “What is unintentional killing? How is the act of unintentionally causing death to be punished?”.

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