18 Jul manslaughter

Manslaughter constitutes one of the most peculiar figures of the entire Italian penal system and represents a case that continues to arouse intense debate both on a jurisprudential and doctrinal level, especially with reference to the nature of the subjective element and its compatibility with the constitutional principle of guilt. Regulated by art. 584 the Penal Code, the crime is committed when someone, through acts aimed at committing the crimes of battery or personal injury, causes the death of a man. The law constitutes an autonomous crime, distinct from both intentional homicide provided for by art. 575 c.p. and from manslaughter referred to in art. 589 c.p., placing itself in an intermediate position between the two cases in terms of the psychological element. The same notion of preterintention, provided for by art. 43 the Penal Code, in fact, it identifies the hypothesis in which the event that occurred is more serious than that desired by the agent, so that death represents a consequence not intentionally pursued but deriving from conduct maliciously aimed at damaging the physical integrity of the victim. The objective element of the crime requires, first of all, the commission of acts concretely aimed at carrying out one of the crimes envisaged by the articles. 581 o 582 c.p.; it is not necessary for such crimes to be committed, it being sufficient that the conduct is objectively aimed at striking or causing personal injury, provided that between such conduct and the lethal event there is a causal relationship ascertained according to the general criteria dictated by the articles. 40 e 41 the Penal Code. The Court of Cassation has repeatedly specified that even a single violent action, like a slap, a punch, a push or a kick, it can integrate the material basis of manslaughter if the action causally results in the death of the victim, the particular intensity of the violence does not take on importance, but rather the voluntary carrying out of physical aggression directed against the person. The jurisprudence of legitimacy has in fact constantly affirmed that the intent required by the art. 584 c.p. coincides exclusively with the desire to strike or harm, while death constitutes a further event that transcends the agent's intention. Precisely the identification of the nature of the subjective element represents the most controversial aspect of the case. For a long time, an orientation prevailed according to which manslaughter would constitute a form of liability based solely on the intent of beatings or injuries, with automatic attribution of the death event provided there is a causal link between the conduct and the death. This reconstruction, traditionally defined as a responsibility aggravated by the event or expression of the principle of to engage in an illegal activity, has been the subject of widespread criticism by criminal law doctrine, which highlighted how such a model risks coming into conflict with the principle of personal responsibility enshrined in the art. 27 the Constitution, imposing a substantially objective liability incompatible with modern criminal law. In more recent times the Court of Cassation has progressively developed a different orientation, culminated in the most significant rulings of the Fifth Section, according to which even in manslaughter the death event must be the subject of a subjective accusation compliant with the principle of culpability. According to this reconstruction, death cannot be automatically attributed to the sole occurrence of the causal link, but it requires at least the concrete predictability of the event as a development of the aggressive conduct voluntarily implemented by the agent. This interpretative evolution, welcomed favorably by a large part of the doctrine, aims to bring back the art. 584 c.p. within constitutional parameters, avoiding that criminal liability can be based exclusively on causal data. Of particular importance are the recent decisions of the Supreme Court which have reiterated how the distinguishing criterion between manslaughter and voluntary homicide lies precisely in the psychological attitude of the agent towards the death event. If the subject represents to himself the concrete possibility of death and consciously accepts the risk as a possible consequence of his action, the discipline of intentional homicide applies in the form of possible malice; vice versa, when the agent only wants to hit or injure the victim and the death constitutes an unwanted event, although causally deriving from the aggression, the figure of manslaughter recurs. The distinction takes on particular practical relevance since it requires the judge to carry out an in-depth reconstruction of the psychological element through an overall evaluation of the methods of conduct., the intensity of the aggression, of the targeted area of ​​the body, the use of any offensive tools, of the repetition of the blows, of the subsequent behavior of the accused and of any further element suitable for reconstructing the actual representation of the event by the officer. The Court of Cassation clarified that the mere fact of having carried out a violent attack does not automatically allow us to infer acceptance of the risk of death, the judge having to verify whether the agent actually foreseen the possible occurrence of the lethal event and consciously accepted it as the price of his conduct. Precisely from this point of view, the figure of manslaughter continues to represent one of the main border areas with respect to possible malice, requiring a careful analysis of the concrete circumstances of the case. A further interpretative question concerns the identification of acts aimed at committing beatings or injuries. Jurisprudence believes that the regulatory reference should not be interpreted in a strictly technical sense, but includes any voluntary physical aggression capable of affecting the bodily integrity of the victim, even if the lethal event occurs through indirect or anomalous causal mechanisms, provided that there is no interruption of the etiological link. There are numerous rulings that have recognized the configurability of the art. 584 c.p. in cases where the victim died following a fall caused by a push, of impact against rigid surfaces or for clinical complications resulting from injuries sustained during the attack. In all these hypotheses, the judgment of causality takes on a central role and must be conducted according to the criterion of condicio sine qua non integrated by the counterfactual judgment and the principles developed by jurisprudence regarding criminal causality.. The majority doctrine also underlines how manslaughter cannot be traced back either to a form of malice mixed with guilt or to pure objective liability., but constitutes an autonomous figure in which the legislator has built a particular criterion for attributing the most serious event, subsequently reinterpreted by constitutionally oriented jurisprudence in light of the art. 27 Cost. Precisely the evolution of recent years has highlighted a progressive overcoming of the most ancient reconstructions based on to engage in an illegal activity, favoring a model in which even the subsequent event must be concretely blameworthy to the perpetrator of the conduct. From a procedural point of view, the evidence of the subjective element takes on decisive importance and is normally deduced from circumstantial elements such as the nature of the blows inflicted, the strength of the aggression, the physical characteristics of the victim, the context in which the action took place, the possible use of improper weapons, the number of attackers and their behavior after the events. The Supreme Court has repeatedly reiterated that the boundary between possible malice and malice cannot be drawn using abstract criteria, but it requires a rigorous assessment based on the concrete modalities of the conduct and on the actual psychological representation of the agent. On the sanctioning level, art. 584 c.p. provides for a prison sentence of ten to eighteen years, significantly higher than that foreseen for manslaughter but lower than for voluntary homicide, confirming the legislator's desire to attribute to the case an intermediate gravity consistent with the particular structure of the subjective element. Manslaughter therefore continues to represent one of the most complex aspects of Italian criminal law, in which the problems relating to causality are intertwined, to guilt, to the foreseeability of the event and to the distinction between possible malice and preterintention. The evolution of legitimacy jurisprudence demonstrates how the interpretation of the law is progressively oriented towards a reading that is fully compliant with constitutional principles, enhancing the need for truly personal and culpable responsibility, in line with the development of the best contemporary criminal law doctrine and with the most recent rulings of the Court of Cassation which have definitively reduced the reconstructions based on strict liability, reaffirming the central role of the principle of guilt in the attribution of the death event.