CAUTION !!! automatic translation from Polish
- What is the reason for the introduction of Article 156 § 1 item 3 to the Penal Code?
Attention: translated from Polish
Article 156 of the Penal Code refers to the penalisation of pejorative behaviour related to causing serious bodily harm. Undoubtedly, the legally protected good in the quoted provision is human health, which should not be violated by another individual, and if he or she commits such an act, he or she must bear a correspondingly severe penalty.
In Article 156 of the Penal Code, the legislator distinguished serious damage to health, which may consist in:
1) depriving a person of sight, hearing, speech, the ability to procreate,
2) other severe disability, serious incurable or long-term illness, real life-threatening illness, permanent mental illness, total or significant permanent inability to work in the profession or permanent, significant disfigurement or deformity of the body,
3) excision, infibulation or other permanent and significant mutilation of the female genital organ.
It is worth noting that point 3 of the article in question refers directly to serious damage to health, which results in the death of the victim. The perpetrator may be sentenced to imprisonment for a period of not less than 5 years or life imprisonment for the committed act.
The introduction of Article 156 § 1 item 3 to the Penal Code results from the need for comprehensive regulation of criminal liability for the consequences of the most serious crimes against human health and life. This provision penalizes causing serious damage to health
in the form of death of another person, supplementing the catalogue of consequences specified in Article 156 § 1 points 1 and 2 of the Penal Code, m.in. deprivation of a person’s sight, hearing, speech, ability to procreate, and other severe disability or permanent mental illness, other serious incurable or long-term illness.The introduction of this provision fills a legal gap that could arise in situations where the effects of an act did not fit into the existing definitions, and at the same time their gravity justified the qualification of the act as a crime. Thus, Article 156(1)(3) of the Penal Code meets the requirements of the principle of proportionality of the imposition of punishment and performs the function of general and specific prevention of criminal law, protecting one of the basic legal interests – human life and health.
- What is the reason for the introduction of Article 156 § 1 item 3 to the Penal Code?
- Questionnaire of individual assessment of the victim
- Protection of Private Life
- Individual Victim Assessment Questionnaire
- Misappropriation of entrusted goods – are our intentions important?
- What is the reason for introducing art. 191 b of the Penal Code to the Penal Code?
- Resumption of Conditionally Discontinued Proceedings
- Substitute penalty of imprisonment
- Degree of social harmfulness
- Obligation to deliver correspondence to the address indicated by the suspect
- Mandatory temporary seizure of a motor vehicle – amendment to the Code of Criminal Procedure Act
- Amendment of art. 12 § 4 of the Code of Criminal Procedure
- Changes in the Penal Code from February 13, 2025
- The amendment to the criminal procedure provides new tools to combat threats
- Family assistant in criminal proceedings
- Assist and supporter – synonyms or different phenomena?
- Inadmissibility of combining substitute punishment
- Method of calculating the probation period
- Forfeiture of the car
- A more relative act – definition
- Interruption of the execution of a prison sentence
- Order for payment proceedings
- Transfer the case to another equivalent court for consideration
- Espionage is now punished much more severely
- Forfeiture of a greyhound dog
- Civil action in criminal proceedings
- Observation in a closed facility (Article 203 of the Code of Criminal Procedure)
- Recidivism
- Discontinuation of criminal proceedings due to the obvious lack of factual grounds for the accusation under Art. 339 § 3 point 2 CCP
- Changes in the Penal Code in 2023
- Social harmfulness of the act as a constitutive element of the crime
- The insignificance of the social harmfulness of the act.
- Hearing of minors
- Blue Card, and art. 207 k.k.
- Human trafficking as a crime against freedom
- Obtaining evidence in a criminal trial
- Illegal adoption
- Objective attribution of the effect in the event of a road accident
- An exception to compulsory imprisonment
- Assessment by the court of the social harmfulness of the act
- To be adjudicated by a judge in a state of intoxication
- Amendment of the Code of Civil Procedure – Art. 7533. Provision of a security in the form of a monthly allowance for the provision of means of subsistence
- Preventive measures – what should you know?
- Change in the penal code – false alarm
- What is a substitute prison sentence?
- The International Criminal Court in The Hague
- Contacts with a person temporarily arrested
- Drunk driving – conditional discontinuation of the proceedings
- What are the conditions and the procedure for adjudicating on granting a prisoner a permit to serve a custodial sentence in the electronic supervision system?
- The absolute penalty of deprivation of liberty is the basis of a cassation appeal
- Consequences of the public prosecutor’s absence at the hearing
- Offenses under the Copyright and Related Rights Act
- The concept of „violent crime” in Art. 41a § 1 of the Criminal Code
- Placing in a psychiatric institution
- Poor health may not be the basis for suspending the enforcement of the judgment
- Criminal liability for plagiarism
- Placing the convict in a medical facility due to COVID-19
- Access to the files of the proceedings
- Amendments to Art. 37a of the Criminal Code
- Limitation of sanity as a circumstance taken into account by the court when imposing a sentence
- Changes to the criminal appeal procedure
- Subsidiary indictment
- Prosecutor’s objection regarding the detention on remand
- What threatens a witness who gives false testimony for fear of impending criminal liability?
- The defendant’s absence at the trial
- Execution of punishment during a pandemic
- Evidence of exclusion – improvement or threat?
- Prevention of Sex-related Crimes
