According to the relevant provisions of article 17 of China's criminal law, it can be divided into three stages: completely irresponsible age stage, relatively irresponsible age stage and completely irresponsible age stage: 1, completely irresponsible age stage:1under 4 years old. Generally speaking, people under the age of 14 are still in infancy and do not have the ability to identify and control their own behavior. Therefore, the law stipulates that criminal responsibility shall not be investigated for acts that endanger society committed by people under the age of 14; However, if necessary, parents or guardians may be ordered to strictly discipline them according to law. 2. Age stage of relative criminal responsibility:1under 4 years of age1under 6 years of age According to the relevant provisions of Article 17 of China's Criminal Law, a person who has reached1under 4 years of age1under 6 years of age commits intentional homicide and intentional injury, causing serious injury, death and rape. 3. Age of full criminal responsibility: those who have reached 16 but under 18, and those who have reached 16 but under 18, should bear criminal responsibility for all criminal acts, but should be given a lighter or mitigated punishment according to the circumstances. If the target of the crime is under 14 years old, in this case, the parties may not be given administrative punishment, and the guardians of minors are generally educated to strengthen supervision over minors. Minors who have reached the age of 14, but have not yet reached the age of 18, can be given a lighter administrative penalty, and those who have reached the age of 18 will not receive any special care.
Legal objectivity:
Articles 2 to 4 of the Interpretation on Several Issues Concerning the Specific Application of Law in the Trial of Juvenile Criminal Cases (hereinafter referred to as the Interpretation) stipulate the determination of the age of juvenile criminal responsibility. In the trial of juvenile criminal cases, the age of juvenile defendants involves not only major procedural issues such as whether to appoint a defense lawyer according to law and whether the case should be tried in public, but also major substantive issues such as whether the defendant has criminal responsibility ability, the size of criminal responsibility ability and what kind of punishment to apply to him. Therefore, verifying and accurately identifying the age of juvenile defendants is an unavoidable problem in handling every juvenile criminal case, which is related to the correct implementation of the law and the guarantee of judicial justice. Articles 2 to 4 of the Interpretation stipulate the age of criminal responsibility of juvenile defendants in judicial practice in three aspects: First, Article 2 of the Interpretation clearly stipulates how to calculate the age of 14, 16 and 18. China officially adopts the Gregorian calendar, and the household registration management clearly requires citizens to register their household registration with the birth date of the Gregorian calendar. Therefore, Article 2 of the Interpretation clearly stipulates that the age of the defendant is calculated by the date of birth in the Gregorian calendar. If it is found that the defendant's age is the date of birth in the lunar calendar, then the defendant's age should also be calculated by the corresponding Gregorian calendar. In view of the fact that the specific calculation of "one year old" involves four time points: year, month, day and hour, and considering that the calculation of the defendant's age with day as the time point not only conforms to the requirements of the criminal law, but also conforms to people's daily habits and concepts, and is easy to operate in judicial practice, Article 2 of the Interpretation stipulates that "one year old" is calculated from the second day of one year old. For example, we have a habit in China that birthdays are celebrated according to the Gregorian calendar, especially in rural areas. We can't tell the date of birth of the defendant in Gregorian calendar, but we have to ask the zodiac to know. Second, based on the importance of accurately verifying the age of the defendant in handling juvenile criminal cases, Article 3 of the Interpretation stipulates that "the age of the defendant at the time of committing the alleged crime should be ascertained" as a general principle and requirement, and requires that "the judgment document should specify the year, month and day of the defendant's birth". That's what we did in the experiment. Third, it is difficult to find out the age of a large number of juvenile defendants in judicial practice. For example, although many parties have collected evidence in some cases, due to various complicated reasons, it is still impossible to accurately determine the age of the defendants according to the collected evidence; Some defendants gave birth in violation of the family planning policy and did not apply for household registration. There are also some defendants who "don't tell their real names, addresses and identities" as stipulated in the second paragraph of Article 128 of the Criminal Procedure Law, and the procuratorate brings a lawsuit to the court with their self-reported names and ages, and so on. As a supplement to Article 3 of the Interpretation, Article 4 specifically stipulates how to deal with the case that the defendant's age is "really unknown". Article 4 of the Interpretation distinguishes two situations: the first situation is that Article 1 stipulates that "if there is not sufficient evidence to prove that the defendant has reached the legal age of criminal responsibility when committing the alleged crime, and it is really impossible to find out, it shall be presumed that he has not reached the corresponding legal age of criminal responsibility." When applying this clause accurately, we should pay attention to the following three aspects: 1. This provision can only be applied if all means and measures have been taken to find out the age of the defendant and the age is "really impossible to find out". What needs to be added is that at present, many judicial organs adopt the practice of bone age identification for defendants. If the bone age appraisal conclusion can determine the age of the defendant, the bone age appraisal conclusion can be used as an important basis. But sometimes the conclusion of bone age appraisal can only measure an age range, and it is impossible to determine the specific age of the defendant. In this case, the conclusion of bone age appraisal can only be used as auxiliary reference evidence. Ex.: A man who has just been tried in our hospital calls himself Wang Xiang. Last year, the bone age of Changchun Stadium was 17.6 years old, and he reported it himself as198865438+February 29th. According to this calculation, he is less than 18 years old, but according to the bone age, he is 18 years and 2 months. 2. Unexplained age really refers to three important age points: whether it is 14, 16 and 18. It is mainly considered that these three age points are related to juvenile delinquency and non-delinquency, whether this crime and that crime are given a lighter or mitigated punishment, and even whether the death penalty can be applied. Therefore, from the perspective of fully protecting human rights, if it is really impossible to find three age limits, the presumption principle should be applied. 3. Infer the age of the defendant from the principle of benefiting the defendant. Generally, the age of the defendant can be inferred according to the principle of "low is not high", so as to avoid investigating the criminal responsibility of minors who should not be investigated, or should not be sentenced to death. Example: A comrade in the criminal court of the Provincial Hospital told a case of a juvenile offender. A middle school student in Suihua celebrated 18 birthday and went to a bar after dinner. He got into a conflict with someone else and killed someone. The focus of the dispute is whether the murder happened before 12 or after 12 in the middle of the night, and the final decision was made before 12. The second case is that the second paragraph of Article 4 of the Interpretation stipulates that "if the relevant evidence is sufficient to prove that the defendant has reached the legal age of criminal responsibility when committing the alleged crime, but the specific date of birth of the defendant cannot be accurately ascertained, it shall be deemed that he has reached the corresponding legal age of criminal responsibility." When applying this article, we should pay attention to: 1. There is sufficient evidence to prove that the defendant was 14, 16 or 18 when he committed the alleged crime, but it is impossible to find out the specific date of birth of the defendant. 2. In this case, the trial of the case should not be unduly delayed because the exact age of the defendant cannot be ascertained, but the defendant should be convicted and sentenced according to the legal age of criminal responsibility with sufficient evidence.