The system of grounds for exempting a person from the legal consequences of a crime

Introduction: the grounds for exemption from criminal responsibility, punishment, and the recognition the act that has caused harm to the object of criminal law protection as non-criminal, are essential for a fair legal assessment of a person’s behaviour. In this connection, the author of the paper aims to study the grounds for not applying the legal consequences of a crime (act) to a person. Methods: the methodological framework for the study is a set of methods of scientific knowledge, among which the main ones are the methods of historicism, consistency, analysis and comparative law. Results: the author’s position grounded in the work is based on the legislation and the opinions of the competent scientific community on the question of why certain grounds are combined by the legislator into separate chapters and are endowed with common features, and other grounds belong to different grounds for the release of a person. With the help of the legal analysis of the provisions of the theory of law, the differentiation of the characteristic features of the grounds for not bringing a person to criminal responsibility is carried out. The questions of the legal regulation of not only various types of grounds for the release of a person, but also the legal consequences of committing a crime are raised. The concept of circumstances precluding criminal liability in connection with the voluntary refusal to commit a crime is formulated. Conclusions: the study establishes that a person may be exempted from criminal liability, in connection with the absence of the constituent elements of offence (insanity, infliction by innocence) in his act, and the grounds that are not associated with crime, such as regulated by Chapter 11 of the Criminal Code. However, the circumstances that preclude the criminality of the act, voluntary refusal, as well as the insignificance of the act are not directly enshrined in the Code as the grounds for exempting from criminal liability due to the absence of corpus delicti, however, the text of the articles of the Code states that the act is not a crime.