corpus delicti

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With Corpus Delicti ( "body of the crime", latin corpus - body delictum - crimes; Plural: corpora Delicti) is designated in the early modern external features, in which an offense is expressed, in particular a piece of evidence through which a certain Perpetrator of an act could be convicted.

Historically, the doctrine of the corpus delicti comes from the evidence doctrine of the canonical Italian inquisition process of the 13th century, which penetrated into German criminal procedural law as part of its reception .

It is formulated in Art. 6 of the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina of 1532: Only after an Inquisition General had established whether a crime had actually occurred ( constare de delicto ), a suspect could be questioned. Starting from the act, which had to be tied to certain corpora delicti, the perpetrator was determined. A visual inspection of a killed person ( constare de corpore mortuo ) served as evidence of an act . In order to then determine the perpetrator of a certain accused ( special inquisition ), above all witnesses were heard or the suspect was subjected to the embarrassing questioning (torture), which was supposed to lead to a confession.

The term was transformed in the 18th century more and more from the physical object to abstract, legal concept of crime offense (from the Latin. Existentia facti ). Ernst Ferdinand Klein defined in 1797: "Those facts which, taken together, determine the concept of a certain type of crime, constitute the fact (corpus delicti)." In 1832 Paul Johann Anselm von Feuerbach described the "fact of the crime (corpus delicti)" as the "The epitome of the characteristics of a particular act or fact contained in the legal concept of a certain type of illegal act."

In modern doctrine of criminal law, the offense as a prerequisite for criminal liability is understood to be the abstract description of a criminally relevant situation in the form of a human act or omission or the description of prohibited behavior. The reasons for a criminal judgment must indicate “the facts considered to be proven, in which the legal features of the criminal offense are found” ( Section 267 (1) StPO). The concept of the corpus delicti, on the other hand, no longer has an independent procedural meaning. In colloquial language, the corpus delicti is usually understood to be the object of evidence, ie the evacuation piece, but sometimes also the instrument of injury or the means of crime.

In general terms, the term also often describes a thing to which a special action or a sequence of actions can be determined. This use also applies to mundane offenses. Accordingly, z. B. the football that has broken through the window, or the undesirable "dog poo" in the front yard is colloquially referred to as corpus delicti .

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jörg Eisele: The meaning of the doctrine of the "corpus delicti" in criminal proceedings in the early modern period. Lexicon for the history of witch hunt, ed. v. Gudrun Gersmann, Katrin Moeller and Jürgen-Michael Schmidt, in: historicum.net, online
  2. ^ Karl-Ernst Meinhardt: The embarrassing criminal law of the free imperial city of Frankfurt am Main in the mirror of the criminal practice of the 16th and 17th centuries. Frankfurt am Main 1957, p. 59
  3. ↑ Ernst Ferdinand Klein: Principles of natural jurisprudence together with a history of the same , Halle 1797, p. 57, according to Jörg Eisele: The meaning of the doctrine of the "corpus delicti" in criminal proceedings in the early modern period. Lexicon for the history of witch hunt, ed. v. Gudrun Gersmann, Katrin Moeller and Jürgen-Michael Schmidt, in: historicum.net, online
  4. ↑ Creifeld's legal dictionary, 19th edition 2007
  5. ↑ Tilch / Arloth, Deutsches Rechtslexikon, 3rd edition 2001