Some problems with determining the scope of criminal liability of the potential offender and the victim in the doctrine of objective imputation of a result

Abstract

Under criminal law doctrine objective imputation theory is established as an additional filter besides causality, according to which the offender’s conduct must have created a wrongful risk of a specific result, and the result must be the product of this very risk. Applying the “wrongful risk” formula becomes particularly problematic in configurations of many people, when the final risk arises as a result of the accumulation of conducts of various actors, including the victim of the crime itself. This paper focuses on the criteria for determining the scope of liability in such situations and is a proposal to complement purely quantitative comparisons. In the latter task, it presents some considerations of German authors, especially on the autonomy in making decisions by the victim.