CERTAIN ASPECTS OF DETERMINING THE PLOT IN THE QUALIFICATION OF CRIMINAL OFFENSES AGAINST THE LIFE AND HEALTH OF A PERSON

Abstract

On April 5, 2001, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine adopted the Criminal Code of Ukraine. As of 2024, significant mistakes made by the legislator have not been corrected. The article considers and analyzes the problems of defining the concepts of criminal offenses against life and health of a person which contradict the fundamentals of the theory of criminal law. The section on criminal offenses against life and health begins with Article 115 “Murder”. The legislator defines the concept of murder, which leads to tautology in a certain list of articles of this code. At the same time, Art. 119 of this Code contains two forms of guilt simultaneously in relation to the same object of encroachment. When passing sentences, the presiding judges are forced to ignore the shortcomings of the legislator and overlook the nonsense in the dispositions of the articles of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. At the same time, the author analyzes the works of scholars who have studied this issue. Court cases, namely, verdicts, are studied. The author proposes amendments to the Criminal Code of Ukraine with the aim of its improvement, namely, the disposition of Article 115 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine should be restated as follows: “Murder, i.e. unlawful infliction of death to another person”. Thus, the form of guilt should be excluded from the definition of “murder”. In this wording, the Criminal Code of Ukraine would have a logical definition of the concept of “murder”. At the same time, it would eliminate the need to replace the phrase “premeditated murder” in a certain list of articles, since it does not affect the content of the articles of the Criminal Code of Ukraine and does not violate its logic, and in Article 119 of this Code, the replacement of the concept of “murder” with “causing death” does not make sense.