Critical Review of the Principle, “No Blood Money for the One Killed Due to Legal Punishment”

One of the legal principles which is applied in penal jurisprudence is the principle, “No blood money for the one killed due to legal punishment”. According to the generally accepted view of the Shī‘a jurists and also article 485 of Islamic Penal Code, the content of the principle denotes the general negation of ḍamān (liability) for the one killed by implementation of legal punishment. The most important arguments of the generally accepted view is the traditions that assert the general negation of ḍamān. Accordingly, the related traditions specify the arguments of the inviolability of the Muslim’s blood. In case the inviolability of the Muslim’s blood is recognized as refusal from particularization and the explicitness of the traditions related by the believers in the general negation of ḍamān is tainted, then the evidences of the principle can be particularized by the arguments of the inviolability of the Muslim’s blood, ḍimān can be merely removed from the responsibility of the implementer of legal punishment, and the blood money of such a person be paid from the public treasury. With the analytical-descriptive method, this research has dealt with the study of this probability and its arguments, the critique of the generally accepted view and other views, the realm and executive rules of the principle, and its relation to the similar principles.Furthermore, according to both viewpoints, this principle can be applied to retribution (qiṣāṣ), but its application to canonical punishment on the basis of generally accepted view is apt to be tainted and controversial based on the fact that the content of the principle is the general negation of ḍamān. Given the view posited in this writing, in all the legal and canonical punishments if the implementation of punishment leads to death, the public treasury undertakes ḍamān.