Feasibility of the institution of "immunity from punishment" in connection with sick convicts in Iranian jurisprudence and law.

Many criminal convicts get sick before the execution of the punishment or during the punishment and claim that they cannot bear the punishment. Article 502 of the Criminal Procedure Law approved in 2012 foresees the physical and mental illness of the convicted person as a criterion for not tolerating punishment. The most legal protection considered in this article is to convert the punishment of sick convicts into punishment crimes. Determining the institution of exemption from punishment in the Islamic Penal Code has a history with the establishment of legal grounds. However, the mechanism of exemption from punishment is not foreseen at the stage of execution of the sentence due to the illness of the convicted person. Some standards and requirements of human rights emphasize the prohibition of execution of punishment for sick convicts. Despite the necessity of exempting sick convicts from punishment and the lack of provision by the legislator, no research has been done in this regard so far. For this reason, in this article, by analyzing the jurisprudential and legal foundations of impunity and also considering the goals of punishments in Islamic criminal law, we will examine the possibility or impossibility of using the institution of exemption from punishment for sick convicts in the context of punishment, retribution, Key words: criminal, physical and mental illness, impunity, hard-to-treat and incurable diseases and punishment. The result is that at least in the case of insanity and difficult-to-treat and incurable diseases, it is possible to be exempted from punishment in the sentencing of some punishments, and it is necessary to foresee this issue in Article 502 of the Criminal Procedure Law along with the conversion of the punishment.