Homicidio a petición: ¿debe estar criminalizado el homicidio a petición?

Abstract

This article analyzes and reflects on Colombian legislation regarding homicide upon request, based on doctrinal assumptions and comparative law as to whether or not it should be criminalized. The definition of life as a legal good is quite complex, since it constitutes the supreme legal good in any legal system, and therefore, it will always generate different positions. It questions the need to criminalize homicide upon request, since it is a deliberate and conscious behavior. If the legislative power has allowed the provision of other legal goods, also called rights, what reason would there be to criminalize homicide upon request when it is the owner of the legal right who, showing consent and autonomy, pursues such behavior? If attempted suicide is not criminalized, why should homicide upon request be? Is it because of the intervention of a third party that a crime is immediately established? If so, could professional tattooists commit personal injury? Is tattooing yourself a crime? Finally, is life not a right? When homicide on request is criminalized, are we forcing people to live, even knowing that life is a right and not an obligation (or, at least, this is what our Constitution says)? The law must make progress every day and break the schemes that distance it from social reality. It should be characterized by constant dynamism in order to achieve its goals, and above all, timely and necessary, application in social phenomena that arise day by day, and refrain from criminalizing behaviors that do not merit punishing.