QUALIFICATION OF CRIMES ON MOTIVES AND PURPOSES

Abstract

One of the issues of activities of law enforcement officials is the practice of unjustified
imputation of crimes with aggravating circumstances or, conversely, the imputation
of crimes without such features when they are actually available in cases where the role
of aggravating circumstances is played by the motive and purpose of the act.
The reasons for such errors are: 1) wrong understanding of the meanings of "criminal
motive", "criminal purpose"; 2) wrong interpretation of norms of the Special part of
the criminal code providing for specific offences with certain motives and purposes; 3)
incorrect identification of culprit’s motive and purpose in committing the crime with the
motive and purpose, assigned by a specific offence.
The article reveals the understanding of the motive and purpose of having criminally-
legal value, as well as the specific rules of qualification of criminal acts on the relevant
elements of the subjective side of the corpus delicti.
In the classification of crimes it is necessary to establish what motive or purpose
was crucial, compared to other driving forces, and thus determined the whole course of
the volitional process of the relevant crime. In the summary criminal legal evaluation of
the crime it is necessary to consider only the dominant motive or purpose.
If the guilty person doubts what motive or purpose were of decisive value for him
and thus determined his behavior, or when each of the established motives or purposes
were equally important to the perpetrator, in the absence of which the crime would not
be committed, the qualification of the criminal acts needs considering each of these motives
or purposes.