NCJ Number
70696
Journal
Revue internationale de criminologie et de police technique Volume: 33 Issue: 1 Dated: (January-March 1980) Pages: 49-75
Date Published
1980
Length
27 pages
Annotation
Legal considerations associated with the required conformity of French civil court decisions to criminal court decisions and the effect of victim provocation issues on the relationship between the jurisdictions are discussed.
Abstract
Officially, decisions of criminal courts also determine civil responsibility of offenders, thus assuring uniformity among courts. This could mean that a criminal sanction must be pronounced before civil reparations can be ordered. But civil courts have developed means of modifying responsibility determination by considering the role of victim provocation. In this way, assessment of victim precipitation has been separated from other elements in the criminal court decision, and the civil judge has developed a means of avoiding conclusions of the criminal judge which he does not wish to retain. The essential issue in question is the independence of criminal responsibility from the attitude or actions of the victim and the unimportance of criminal court determination of exact degrees of responsibility for persons involved in offenses. Also considered are recently obtained authority of civil courts to examine the degree of victim provocation and to weigh the cause-effect relationship between victim provocation and the offender's commission of the crime. As the author shows, civil courts may only rule on degree of responsibility if the issue has been left open by the criminal court. The article is continued in a later number of the journal. For the continuations, see NCJ 74607 and NCJ 74622. Extensive notes (85 citations) are supplied.