Predicate offense

In German criminal law, predicate offense refers to a criminal offense, the realization of which is a prerequisite for another criminal offense. However, the term is not mentioned in the text of the law itself, the law only describes certain constellations in which a predicate offense is recognizable as a condition.

So that sets receiving stolen property ( § 259 of the Criminal Code ) requires that the thing that is gehehlt, comes from a directed against property crime. The property offense from which the matter was illegally won constitutes the predicate offense.

The predicate offense does not always have to be defined according to the protected legal interest. The offense of money laundering ( § 261 StGB ) names all crimes and certain enumeratively listed offenses as predicate offenses .

According to Section 211 of the Criminal Code , the willful killing of another person is punished as murder , among other things , if it was done with the intention of covering up a previous crime ( predicate offense ).

The term predicate offense is used less often with regard to the offenses of preferential treatment ( § 257 StGB ), in which assistance is aimed at ensuring that the perpetrator receives the benefits of the crime, and the prevention of punishment ( § 258 StGB ), although also these facts can only be realized if another act has preceded it.

Sometimes one speaks of predicate offense in connection with offenses which were preceded by the offender's intentional intoxication, in particular the " total intoxication " according to § 323a StGB . According to this, the punishment of an offender would be limited or excluded due to the lack of (limited) culpability.