Responsibility for murder from compassion: some issues of theory and practice

The article discusses the problems of criminal liability for a murder committed on the basis of compassion for the victim. The authors note that in the absence of a corresponding independent norm in the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, this crime in judicial practice in most cases qualifies as a simple murder under Part 1 of Art. 105 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, less often - as the murder of a knowingly helpless victim (paragraph "c" of Part 2 of Art. 105 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). The authors argue that in the context of the gap of the criminal law, compassionate murder should be regarded as a mere murder only if the victim requests the person to be deprived of his life, in connection with which the relevant mitigating punishment circumstance (paragraph "d" of Part 1 of Art. 61 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) it is proposed to state as “the commission of a crime ... based on compassion at the request of the victim”. An analysis of judicial practice showed that the motive of compassion is taken into account by the courts as not only mitigating, but also exceptional (Art. 64 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) circumstances, which allows them to sentence below the lower limit of sanction. In order to ensure uniform application of the law, the authors propose to supplement the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation with the privileged composition of murder out of compassion at the request of the victim.