Crimes are classified in various ways. One of them consists of differentiating two aspects, guilt and fraud. This distinction is relevant because with it it is possible to accurately determine the degree of responsibility of an individual in his criminal conduct.
intentional
A crime is intentional when someone acts under two premises: they have knowledge about what they are doing and they behave completely voluntarily. In other words, the individual who commits a crime knows with certainty that something bad is going to happen and, despite this, he executes an action so that the bad thing finally happens. Thus, whoever shoots another person premeditated and manages to end her life, has committed a crime of homicide with direct intent.
Another modality of intentional homicide would be the eventual one. In it, the individual knows with certainty that his behavior is criminal and risky, but he does not want to cause disproportionate harm. This occurs when someone drives at a very high speed and as a result runs over someone and kills them.
guilty
In this type of crime, the person who carries out the act of killing does not act with premeditation, treachery or cruelty, but behaves recklessly and negligently.
Imagine someone is cleaning their firearm in front of other people and the gun goes off, killing someone nearby. In this case, there is no intent to kill, but it is irresponsible behavior because the cleaning of the weapon should be carried out with certain precautionary measures.
The difference between both modalities of homicide is based on the idea of intentionality
In culpable homicide, the perpetrator of the crime behaves involuntarily, that is, he does not intend to kill but someone dies due to some type of imprudence or negligence. On the contrary, it is classified as intentional homicide when it is shown that the death of someone has occurred intentionally on the part of the aggressor.
Logically, to determine whether a homicide is of one type or another, it is necessary to clarify all the circumstances related to the death of the victim: the means used to commit the crime, the relationship between the accused and the deceased, under what circumstances death occurred, possible mitigating factors, etc.
In the penal code of any country, intentional homicide is accompanied by higher prison sentences than culpable homicide.
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