Rita Aliukonienė, Alvydas Navickas, Aurėja Bareikytė
Abstract
The international community claims that the right to life is a priority, compared to all other inherent human rights. Due to this reason, the majority of criminal laws in different countries provide individual chapters on the regulation of crimes against human life. Therefore, the Criminal Code of the Republic of Lithuania (hereinafter – the Criminal Code), which has entered into force on May 1st of 2003, protect and defend the right to life, as the basis for other rights, because all other human rights are meaningless, unless there is life [1]. The new criminal law of Lithuania embeds a broad system of values and priorities; therefore, it is understandable that the application of some CC norms raises some issues in the judicial practice and requires further analysis. One of such issues – a just separation between the homicide of a newborn (CC art. 131) committed by a mother with limited responsibility and the homicide of a newborn (CC art. 129 c. 2 p. 3) committed by a responsible mother without mental disorders. The analysis of medical, legal literary research, criminal cases and their judicial psychiatric-psychological examinations allows concluding that one of the main criteria, granting the right to punish the perpetrator for the privileged homicide (CC art. 131), is to determine whether the homicide of a newborn was influenced by mother’s childbirth condition.
Keyword(s): criminal act; limited responsibility; homicide of a newborn; neonaticide; childbirth determined by condition; mental disorder.
DOI: 10.5200/sm-hs.2016.010
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