The Content of Collaboration in the Complicity in a Crime

Abstract

The subject of the study was collaboration as a sign of complicity in a crime. The purpose of the article is to describe the content of this feature from its objective and subjective side. The research is based on domestic criminal legislation and materials of domestic judicial practice. The research was conducted using the following methods: the method of comparative jurisprudence, which allowed comparing the provisions on complicity in a crime in the resolutions of the Plenary sessions of the Supreme Court of the USSR based on the provisions of the Criminal Code of the Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic of 1960, and the resolutions of the Plenary sessions of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation based on the provisions of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation of 1996; the method of analyzing documents, which allowed analyzing judicial practice and proposals of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation on complicity in a crime; the formal-logical method, which allowed analyzing the content of the norms of Chapter 7 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. It is concluded that the objective side of collaboration of complicity in a crime includes the community of the accomplices' actions, a single criminal result and a causal relationship between the communal actions of the accomplices and a single criminal result. The subjective side of collaboration of complicity in a crime refers to the community of intent. It is proved that the community of the accomplices' actions means the mutual conditionality of the actions of each of them, achieved through the separation of functions and the combination of their efforts in the process of committing a crime, that a single criminal result for them conditions the presence of a causal relationship between the communal act of the accomplices and a single criminal result. The author criticizes the position expressed in the theory of criminal law according to which there are two types of connections in complicity - causal and causative, as well as judicial practice based on this position, which allows expanding the circle of persons criminally responsible for complicity in a crime. It is argued that the causal relationship in complicity in a crime should be understood as a kind of causal relationships in social phenomena, which is why it is objective and subjective in nature and depends on the consciousness of the accomplices of the crime. It is argued that the causal relationship in complicity in a crime connects the communal act of the accomplices and a single criminal result for them, if such an act is the cause of this result, that is, it contains the inevitability or the real possibility of its occurrence. It is noted that the collaboration of complicity in a crime, from its subjective side, is the compatibility of the intent of the accomplices, which means that they have a mental community. The article shows the specifics of communal intent in complicity in a crime, which consists in the fact that there is a two-way subjective connection between the accomplices and the combination of volitional efforts.