Manslaughter (Austria)
Manslaughter in the sense of Austrian criminal law is a special form of intentional homicidal offense associated with mandatory mitigation of the sentence .
The offense and the possible legal consequences (the penalty framework) are set out in Section 76 of the Criminal Code (StGB) :
Anyone who allows himself to be carried away in a generally understandable violent emotional movement into killing another is to be punished with imprisonment of five to ten years.
The manslaughter represents a privilege compared to the basic offense of the intentional homicide offense, the murder ( § 75 StGB) , which is reflected in the lower penalty framework.
What manslaughter has in common with murder is that both offenses presuppose an intent to kill: the perpetrator at least seriously considered it possible and accepted that his act would lead to the death of another. In the case of manslaughter, however, there is an additional special privilege feature that the perpetrator "lets himself be carried away in a generally understandable violent emotional movement into killing another", i.e. in the affect , whereby both sthenic (anger, anger, etc.) and asthenic affects (horror , Despair, etc.) can come into play.
Through the intent to kill, manslaughter differs from bodily harm with a fatal outcome ( Section 86 StGB), in which bodily harm is intentional, but the perpetrator has only acted negligently with regard to the fatal outcome (to put it simply: the perpetrator "wants" In the case of bodily harm with fatal outcome, "only" injure someone else, but in doing so - unintentionally - causes their death.)
The range of punishment is five to ten years imprisonment.
