It is well known that the Special Part of the Russian Criminal Code begins with article 105 “Murder”. In turn, is it considered a crime to threaten to kill or cause grievous bodily harm? Yes, of course, but you need to be able to distinguish a criminal offense from idle talk.
Objective side
The object within the meaning of Article 119 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation is the right to live, as well as the right to health, they belong to every person, regardless of the circumstances.
The objective side is to detect intent, respectively, either to kill, or to inflict grievous rather than minor harm to health. The decisive importance is attached to the method of committing a crime, it is even spelled out in the title of the article. In criminal law, the threat is the obvious intention to commit the action voiced by the words - deprivation of life or harm. It doesn’t matter which method the criminal chooses to formulate the threat. This can be an oral statement, a written message, a phone call, or even a telegram. It is not even necessary to transmit the message directly to the potential victim, it is enough to pass it on to third parties who will have to report the fact of the threat to the victim.
As a rule, the reasons that prompted the violator to voice or otherwise express the intention to do harm are not taken into account, and ideally, the threat of murder or grievous bodily harm to the court should be considered outside this context. Nevertheless, the reasons can be taken into account when individualizing the punishment if the victim himself, by unlawful actions, provoked the offender to violate the law.
Threat reality
It is impossible to bring a citizen to criminal liability under the analyzed article, if the expressed threat of murder or grievous bodily harm is unfounded and does not constitute a real danger. As a rule, the victim of the crime assesses the seriousness of the statement (or written message) based on knowledge of the identity of the offender. Often the basis for unlawful actions is the relationship between two people, often they are based on mutual hostility. In addition, the reality of danger can be expressed in the manner in which words are expressed or a written message is made, or in the presence of weapons or dangerous items by the offender.
Even the USSR Armed Forces determined that actions that would instantly give a citizen serious reasons to fear the implementation of an ominous promise should be considered a real threat. The Supreme Court called on criminal judges to pay attention to the peculiarities of the behavior of the attacker: often it is the characteristic of behavior that allows you to determine in advance the degree of reality of the expressed or other form of expressed threat. Of paramount importance is the subjective attitude of the victim to receiving the message, since the threat may be hidden or veiled and understandable only to its recipient.
The identity of the offender
The threat of killing or causing grievous bodily harm is a specific crime, therefore it is necessary to evaluate the individual characteristics of the person who violates the criminal law. The level of aggression expressed when conflicts arise, the effect of intoxication on behavior, the availability of a criminal record for violent crimes, as well as other circumstances significant for assessing an offense, should be analyzed.
The motives by which the offender decides to violate the law are very diverse. Their correct establishment and correct assessment contribute to the individualization of punishment.
Differences
The crime in question must be distinguished from an attempt on the life and physical health of a person. The real threat of murder or serious bodily harm can only be expressed in a message of potential danger; the attempt is accompanied directly by actions aimed at realizing the threat (or preparing accordingly for killing or inflicting grievous (and not another degree) harm to health).
In practice, it is necessary to distinguish such a crime as the aforementioned threat of murder or causing grievous bodily harm (Article 119 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) from a number of other offenses. So, you can force a person to seize tissue for subsequent transplantation, extort, resort to violence at the trial stage or force a person to testify - all this is a criminal offense associated with an aggressive warning of danger. To achieve a criminal goal, the violator uses a specific method - a threat.
In the competition of criminal law, one should determine which corpus delicti is in fact general and which is special. According to the generally accepted rule, preference is always given to a special composition.
Specificity
The threat of killing or causing serious bodily harm is recognized as violence only theoretically, since no physical contact in fact occurs. Nevertheless, many scholars and legal theorists emphasize the immorality of the act and advocate the recognition of the analyzed crime as a criminal form of mental violence.
Interestingly, any other threat cannot be considered a violation of the criminal law. So, the promise to do minor harm to health, break things, rob or rape is not a crime according to the meaning of the analyzed article, since it is strictly about the danger of serious harm or murder.