Article 107. Murder committed in a state of passion

Criminal Code of the Russian Federation in the latest edition:

Article 107 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. Murder committed in the heat of passion

1. Murder committed in a state of sudden strong emotional excitement (affect) caused by violence, bullying or grave insult on the part of the victim or other illegal or immoral actions (inaction) of the victim, as well as a long-term psychologically traumatic situation that arose in connection with systematic illegal or immoral behavior of the victim, -

shall be punishable by correctional labor for a term of up to two years, or restriction of liberty for a term of up to three years, or forced labor for a term of up to three years, or imprisonment for the same term.

2. Murder of two or more persons, committed in a state of passion, -

shall be punishable by forced labor for a term of up to five years or imprisonment for the same term.

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Comments on Article 107 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation

The object and objective side of the crime provided for in Article 107 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation coincide with these signs considered in relation to Article 105 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.

Object of crime . The immediate object of a murder committed in a state of passion is human life.

The objective side of murder in a state of passion is expressed in taking the life of another person.

The subjective side of murder in a state of passion is characterized by guilt in the form of sudden direct or indirect intent. Intention can be specified or unspecified; in the latter case, the qualification of the act is carried out in accordance with the actual consequences. Careless causing of death in a state of passion entails liability under Art. 109 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation; a state of strong emotional excitement in this case is recognized as a mitigating circumstance.

Motive . Despite the fact that the motive is not a mandatory feature of the corpus delicti, it must be established for the correct qualification of the crime. The motive in crimes of passion can be almost any impulse directly related to the unlawful or immoral behavior of the victim; the most common in forensic investigative practice are revenge, jealousy, and the desire to punish the offender.

The subject of the crime - murder in a state of passion - is a natural, sane person who has reached the age of sixteen (general subject). Persons under the age of 16 years are not responsible for intentionally causing death in a state of strong mental agitation.

Liability for murder committed in the heat of passion

According to Part 1 of Art. 107 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation for murder in a state of passion gives:

• correctional labor for up to 2 years;
• restriction of freedom for up to 2 years;
• forced labor for up to 3 years;
• imprisonment for up to 3 years.

If a citizen commits the murder of several people in a state of passion, he faces forced labor for up to 5 years, or imprisonment for up to 5 years.

It is worth noting that attempted murder in a state of passion is not qualified under Article 107.

Classification of affect: pathological and physiological affect

Strong mental agitation is an extremely intense, quickly arising and rapidly occurring short-term emotional state, which can be characterized as an “explosion” of emotions in response to the unlawful behavior of the victim, making it difficult to adequately perceive reality and choose the best course of action in the current situation.

Affect is the highest manifestation of strong emotional excitement . In forensic psychiatry, affect is classified into:

1) Pathological affect , which is a temporary mental disorder when a deep clouding of consciousness occurs and a person loses the ability to be aware of his actions and control them, which indicates his insanity.

2) Physiological affect , which is discussed in Art. Art. 107, 113 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. Physiological affect is an exceptionally strong, quickly arising and rapidly occurring short-term emotional state, significantly limiting the course of intellectual and volitional processes, disrupting the holistic perception of the environment and the subject’s correct understanding of the objective meaning of things.

Physiological affect is characterized by inhibition of the functions of the cerebral cortex and emancipation of subcortical centers, which leads to disruption of conscious-volitional processes. Anticipation of the consequences of one's actions becomes vague; control over behavior - impulsive, chaotic, unfocused; attention is disrupted (it becomes focused on the source of affect); All the forces of the body are mobilized for emotional release, accompanied by a powerful release of adrenaline into the blood, increased motor activity and an increase in physical strength. Affect is evidenced by a sharp decrease in consciousness with an expressive experience of resentment, anger, rage, motor automatism, fragmentary perception with forgetting many details of what was done; exit from the state of affective arousal is characterized by typical post-affective asthenia and emotional reactivity.

Arbitrage practice

To make it more clear how passion is qualified in criminal law, let’s consider several examples of crimes of passion from judicial practice.

Example No. 1. Citizen M. lived with her common-law husband, citizen K. Citizen K., when he was intoxicated, beat citizen M. Once again, when citizen K. got drunk and beat citizen M. Citizen M. took a kitchen knife and, While citizen K. was washing his hands in the bathroom, in a state of passion, she inflicted 20 stab wounds on him, hitting vital organs. Citizen M. claimed that she did not remember how she entered the bathtub, and how many blows she gave to citizen K. During a psychiatric examination, it was found that she did not control her actions, and it was established that citizen M. was in a state of cumulative affect. The court sentenced her to 2 years of correctional labor.

Example No. 2. Citizen A. and citizen D. were drinking together, celebrating the birthday of citizen D. During their conversation, an argument ensued. After some time, this dispute turned into mutual insults. Citizen A. began calling citizen D. after which citizen D. attacked citizen A. and strangled him. During interrogation, citizen D. said that he does not remember how he grabbed citizen A. by the neck, he only remembers that he squeezed his hand tightly and shouted to citizen A.: “Don’t you dare talk to me like that!” During the psychiatric examination, it was established that citizen D. was in a state of physiological affect, since citizen A. was found to have multiple bone fractures, which a person cannot inflict with his bare hands. The court sentenced citizen D. to 1 year and 6 months of restriction of freedom.

Actions of the victim that provoke the occurrence of strong emotional disturbance (affect)

The crime provided for in Article 107 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation refers to murder under mitigating circumstances, which is due to the special mental state of the perpetrator caused by the behavior of the victim himself. In each case, it is necessary to establish that the affect (strong emotional disturbance) was sudden and occurred as a result of the reasons specified in the law, caused by the behavior of the victim.

Violence that causes a state of passion can be either physical (beatings, causing harm to health of varying degrees of severity, kidnapping, etc.) or mental (threats of murder, harm to human health, destruction or damage to property, dissemination of slanderous information and etc.). It is important that this violence is unlawful; The legitimate actions of the victim, even those associated with causing harm to the physical or mental health of the subject of the crime, are not the basis for strong emotional disturbance in the sense of Art. 107 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.

Bullying is the deliberate infliction of moral suffering through physical or mental (informational) influence on a person; it can be one-time (for example, evil ridicule) or ongoing (for example, systematic censure, bullying) in nature;

A grave insult is a gross humiliation of the honor and dignity of the perpetrator on the part of the victim, expressed in an indecent form. Assessing the severity of the insult that provoked an affective state is the prerogative of the investigative authorities and the court, and both objective and subjective factors must be taken into account.

Other illegal actions (inaction) on the part of the victim are gross violations of the rights and legitimate interests of the guilty person, his loved ones, society and the state. It does not matter which branches of law are violated by the victim.

Immoral actions means contrary to morality, immoral. For example, treason, betrayal, rudeness, deceit, sexual harassment, etc. Any immoral actions that actually caused a state of strong emotional disturbance in the guilty person can be recognized as the basis of passion.

A long-term psychotraumatic situation that arose in connection with the systematic illegal or immoral behavior of the victim is a certain set of negative life circumstances associated with the behavior of the victim, which are recognized by the perpetrator as unwanted and psychotraumatic. This situation is characterized by a long-term accumulation of negative emotions and ends with a psycho-emotional explosion, when the next episode of the victim’s behavior or other actions (for example, a third party reporting to the perpetrator about facts of unlawful or immoral behavior of the victim unknown to him) overflows the “cup of patience.”

As judicial practice recognizes, there should be no gap in time between the provoking behavior of the victim and the affect. Only in exceptional cases, taking into account special factors or in connection with a long-term traumatic situation, is a certain gap in time possible.

When investigating such circumstances, a forensic psychiatric examination is required, and in particularly complex cases, a comprehensive psychological and psychiatric examination.

How to prove a state of passion

In order to qualify a crime under Article 107 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, it is necessary to prove that the offender was in a state of passion.

Signs of affect are:

• an unexpected threat to the criminal or his close relatives;
• explosive emotional and behavioral reaction of the accused;
• partial impairment of consciousness (for example, reality is perceived distorted);
• loss of control over one's behavior;
• loss or decrease in the ability to predict consequences;
• a feeling of unreality of what is happening;
• depersonalization, i.e. the accused seems to be observing his actions from the outside;
• memory loss, complete or partial (meaning specifically about the events that occurred during the affect);
• speech impairment (screaming, incoherence, etc.);
• increased gesticulation.

After a state of passion, the criminal experiences feelings of exhaustion, both physical and mental, fatigue, a feeling of hopelessness, and a lack of understanding of what happened. The perpetrator may also experience trembling limbs and pale skin.

The state of affect is determined only after a psychiatric examination. Only after a thorough study of the causes of the emotional outburst, the mental state of the accused, and traumatic factors is it concluded whether the criminal was in a state of passion or not.

On the delimitation of crimes provided for in Art. 107 and part 4 of Art. 111 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation

A state of affect is an attack of strong nervous excitement in the form of despair, anger and joy, that is, a unique form of manifestation of a person’s emotional reaction [6]. In an affective state, death, moderate harm to health and serious harm to the health of the victim can be caused. The specificity of the experience of affect is: excessive intensity of internal processes, short duration, etc.

In an affective state, the ability to be aware of one’s actions and deeds, the ability to control one’s behavior, is retained; only pathological affect deprives a person of these opportunities and creates the preconditions for declaring him insane. Recognizing physiological affect as a state that does not exclude sanity, Russian criminal law classifies it as a circumstance that mitigates punishment [2].

In an affective state, a crime is committed that is directly related to a certain unlawful or immoral behavior of the victim: bullying, violence or serious insult or other immoral or illegal actions (inaction), as well as a prolonged psychologically traumatic situation arising due to the systematic immoral or illegal behavior of the victim [7 ]. The action (inaction) of a person who, as a result of the offender’s encroachment on his life, turns into a victim, must, according to the law: firstly, be an extremely strong irritant that can cause affect in the offender; secondly, immoral and unlawful, which indicate the emergence of passion; thirdly, the circumstances that act as the immediate cause of the occurrence of an affective state and the commission of a crime in such a state [5].

In general, the peculiarity of the crime, which is provided for in Art. 107 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation [1], lies, first of all, in the fact that it always follows as a response to the behavior of the victim. This gives rise to the conclusion that a crime can only be committed with the use of active actions. The peculiarity of the objective side of murder in an affective state is that it can only be accomplished through active actions. This can be explained by the fact that an emerging and instantly progressive affect always needs a release, and it is realized in actions; a calm state is excluded in all cases of affect [4].

Actions that are committed by the perpetrator in an affective state have special characteristics. The peculiarity of these actions is that they are limited in time and coincide with the duration of the affect itself. The duration of the affective state of the perpetrator is not regulated in criminal law. The temporary duration of the affect depends on a number of factors, including the psychophysical qualities of the person, the severity of the conflict situation, and the severity of provocative actions on the part of the victim. The approximate range of the state of affect can last from a second to several minutes. Therefore, the illegal actions of the perpetrator must be started under the influence of passion and completed by the time it ceases. Otherwise, the criminal offense cannot be qualified as committed in an affective state [7].

Sometimes in judicial practice the question arises of the qualification of an act that is committed in an affective state, when the perpetrator causes serious harm to the health of the victim, but as a result of cause-and-effect events the death of the victim occurs. For example, the perpetrator, in response to unlawful violence on the part of the victim, stabs the latter in the thigh, and the knife wound hits a large blood vessel, so the victim dies from loss of blood.

In a normal situation, this crime would be classified under Part 4 of Art. 111 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation [1]. However, the legislation does not provide for a crime in an affective state of a similar nature. In the presented situation, the crime is classified under Part 4 of Art. 111 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation [1] is impossible, since for causing grievous harm to health in an affective state, a privileged composition is provided, to be used in necessary cases [3].

It seems that in these cases the perpetrator should only be responsible for causing harm to health in an affective state, despite the fact that in the course of his actions the death of the victim occurred, since all other options turn out to be initially incorrect.

The criminal result when committing a murder in an affective state is the death of a person. Of all the harmful consequences that are caused by an attack on a person’s life, only one, namely the death of a person, is an element of the objective side of murder. The third factual feature of the objective side of murder is the causal connection between criminal actions and the socially dangerous consequence that has occurred. When a murder is committed in a state of passion, unlawful or immoral actions (and inaction) of the victim are the most important condition for the emergence of an affective state in the perpetrator [5].

So, in the presented crime, only the illegality of the actions (inaction) of the victim can be the reason for triggering the affect, and not any other actions or circumstances of the external world.

Summarizing the above, we can generalize that the crime provided for in Art. 107 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation [1] has as an object of encroachment the life of a person, which is similar in nature to the objects of other crimes against human life. In this crime, the victim differs from other categories of victims in that he himself provokes criminal actions with his immoral or illegal behavior.

Thus, the distinction between the elements of crimes provided for in Part 4 of Art. 111 and art. 107 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation [1] on the following grounds:

1. The affective state and subsequent actions of the perpetrator should act as a response to the unlawful behavior of the victim. That is why the response is the reason for the criminal to develop an affect, under the influence of which he commits a criminal attack on the life of another person, that is, the victim;
2. It is possible to commit murder in an affective state only through active illegal actions. These actions are chaotic and impulsive in nature, which are determined by the emotional reactions of the person committing them, and are often carried out with particular harshness.