COMMITTING A CRIMINAL OFFENSE IN CONNECTION WITH THE PERFORMANCE OF THE VICTIM'S OFFICIAL OR CIVIL DUTY AS A CURRENT CIRCUMSTANCE

Abstract

The article reveals topical issues of the circumstance aggravating the punishment provided byparagraph 4 of Part 1 of Article 67 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, – “committing a criminal offense due to theperformance of the victim’s official or public duty.”It is established that this circumstance may mean that this criminally illegal act is committed: 1) in order to preventthe victim from performing official or public duties; 2) on the grounds of revenge for the victim's performance ofofficial or public duty, regardless of the time elapsed from the moment the victim performed his duty to the momentof committing a criminal offense in connection with the victim's performance of official or public duty; 3) duringthe performance of official or public duties by the victim, pursuing other motives or goals.It is argued that the literal interpretation of the provisions of paragraph 4 of Part 1 of Art. 67 of the CriminalCode of Ukraine gives grounds to claim that the victim of a criminal offense in connection with the performance ofthe victim's official or public duty may be the victim himself, who performs official or public duty, and his relatives. At the same time, in order to eliminate the basis for any speculation in law enforcement, it seems appropriate tosupport the proposal that the expansion of victims of criminal offenses referred to in paragraph 4 of Part 1 of Art. 67of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. The most optimal term for this is the term “close person”.The legal literature states that criminal and law nature is a term that covers the definition of the concept(phenomenon), its characteristics and properties, social conditionality, meaning, purpose, history of origin, formationand development, content, mechanism of legal regulation, place in system of criminal and law nature, differencefrom other phenomena, functions and grounds, etc. [6, p. 433]. Of course, it is impossible to pay attention to allcomponents of the criminal and law nature within the study. Therefore, we should focus on the criminal and lawcharacteristics of the most important aspects of law enforcement. After all, the criminal and law characteristic,as scientists rightly point out, is important not only for the qualification of a criminal offense, the imposition ofpunishment, but also in the process of proof.