Qualification of intentional murders in the competition of criminal law norms

Abstract

Taking into account the associative nature of the relevant system of norms, it seems that the nature of the connections between these norms can cause, in the event of the corresponding criminal offense, such an atypical situation of law enforcement as the competition of criminal legal norms. Extrapolating the acquisition of the criminal legal doctrine to the needs of our research, despite some differences in the given definitions, the competition of criminal legal norms in the qualification of intentional murders occurs when: 1) a person committed the intentional murder of one victim, that is, one murder; 2) according to the signs of the actual composition of the committed act, the behavior of the guilty person falls under the signs of several, two or more legal compositions of murder, provided for in several criminal law norms; 3) these norms are in such a logical and legal relationship that excludes their simultaneous application to a specific case and determines the need to apply only one of them. In the doctrine of criminal law, depending on the nature of the relationship between norms, three main types of competition of criminal law norms are distinguished: 1) general and special norms; 2) part and whole; 3) several special norms among themselves. The resolution of situations of competition of criminal law norms when qualifying intentional murder, regardless of the type of such competition, entails the application of only one article of the Special Part of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, since only one criminal offense has been committed. When qualifying intentional murder, the law enforcement body may encounter typical types of competition of criminal law norms: general and special norms, part and whole; several special norms among themselves, as well as with complicated situations, which are due to the peculiarities of the construction of the disposition of criminal law norms. In any case, it should be emphasized that there cannot be an ideal set of criminal offenses provided for by competing criminal law norms. Therefore, the practice of courts that allow such a combination should be defined as unfounded and should not be applied to the criminal law assessment of intentional attacks on another person’s life.