Charge of guilt
The charge of guilt is a criminal liability requirement in German criminal law . Its fulfillment means that an individual-personal reproach can be made against the perpetrator because the attitude and behavior are not in accordance with the legal system.
Form of guilt: intentional guilt / negligence
In the case of offenses of negligence , the charge of negligence must be examined. In the case of intentional offenses , the charge of intentional guilt must be examined. This is lacking in the case of an error in the status of the permit .
Awareness of injustice
The characteristic of personal reproach is, in addition to the delimited form of guilt, negligent guilt, the intellectual factor of the ability to perceive wrongdoing (awareness of wrongdoing ). In short, the perpetrator's insight into the material illegality of his actions is checked here. Since the notion of blame not only includes the factual inability content, see the injustice of the act, but alternatively also can not act legally compliant despite this insight, the fact that verification of the volitional factor is control capability in these cases indicated ( § 20 of the Criminal Code).
As part of the examination of the material illegality of the perpetrator's behavior, the current, at least potential, awareness of wrongdoing is taken into account. A personal charge of guilt will result from the opportunity to gain insight into the injustice of the act with reasonable use of the powers of knowledge and values. If necessary, there are indications of a prohibition error or an error in permission from the doctrine of error .
Lack of excuse
There must be no grounds for excuse for personal accusation of the act (accusation of guilt). Under certain circumstances, the person affected by the accusation finds himself in the situation of an act of self-defense which he exaggerates out of confusion or fear and horror beyond the limits of the necessary defensive measures. Methodologically, the so-called intensive emergency defense excess according to § 33 StGB is discussed here, which is a legal excuse to exonerate the allegation.
Occasionally, norm-compliant behavior cannot be expected at all. So if an illegal act is committed in a current, not otherwise avertable danger to life, limb or freedom in order to protect yourself or a relative, Section 35 of the Criminal Code. This is an apologetic emergency case.
Another case in which there is no reason for excuse is the so-called supra- legal excuse emergency , which is not regulated by law . It results from a conflict of obligations that excludes guilt . The offender must sacrifice a legally equivalent legal interest in order to save a threatened legal interest . As an example, the case where a doctor has to let another die to properly treat one patient due to the lack of another heart-lung machine may serve. According to another opinion, this is an example of a so-called justifying conflict of duties. The acting doctor is therefore not only excused, but also justified if a patient dies in this situation. The behavior of Nazi doctors, who selected a few victims and brought them to certain death in order to save many others from death, is usually used as an example of an "above-legal excusatory emergency". In any case, they pleaded that without the selection they had made, other doctors would have taken their place, who would have "singled out" far more people. The problem of selection requires a lot of discussion in criminal law dogmatics.
