فصلنامه پژوهش حقوق کیفری
پیاپی 36 (پاییز 1400)

The point of departure in the present article is distinguishing two fundamental philosophical-legal questions as follow: ‘Why are we allowed to punish’ and ‘Why do we punish’. Since the focus of traditional approaches has been mainly put on the latter question, jurists have failed to pay scant attention to the former one. Addressing the first question leads us to reflect on ‘the permissibility of applying coercive measure against human beings, not the goal pursued through such application’. This leads us further on to reflect on the four strictly deontological theories of punishment, the last of which (the right forfeiture theory of punishment) is discussed here. The right forfeiture theory of punishment which itself can be discussed in the light of two weak and strong versions has faced various challenges raised by its critics. I, defensively, address four challenges of ‘indeterminate authorization’, ‘status’, ‘suitability’, and ‘duration and breadth’ by an argumentative-critical method.

The legitimacy and acceptability of punishment is dependent on the legitimacy of its constructive political structures. To legitimize the political structures, we need the rule of law. Governments acting according to law consider rationality as a measure of legitimacy and credit the values and moral, social, and cultural norms of society. In modern governments based on wisdom, the principle of preserving the natural rights of humans and freedom has been established on reason. Citizens have the right to protest against it when governments fail to do their duty in protecting citizens’ freedoms. The principle of the right of states to punish, the basis and its principled structure and its effects, are the questions of the present study which has been carried out in descriptive-analytic mode. The right of citizens to rehabilitation and justice desert, as well as the rights of citizens to civil disobedience, and the right not to be punished are the results of the application of the rational-based right to punishment. The consequences of rational punishment are the mitigation and humanization of punishment and providing reasonable benefits to victims, criminals, and citizens.

Technical studies of criminal law rarely discuss the social aspects of punishment. Punishment has a deep relation with other social institutions such as power, culture and punishment is part of the social structure. As a result, this phenomenon has close relation with other parts of social structure. Torture, as one shape of penal reaction, is no exception to this pervasive rule. Birth and continuation of these ritual punishments have complex and deep relations with other social phenomena. However, technical studies of criminal law are reluctant to examine the hidden sociological aspects of torture.  The Sociology of punishment tries to show thesehidden relations. Sociological study shows that torture has a deep relation with the identity of the collective conscious. In this research, with the sociological method, I try to analyze the process of birth and continuation of rituals of torture in ancient Iran.

Many codes advocating public morals have been challenged during recent years. The decriminalization of immoral acts, as one of the most important aspects of modern criminal law, has been rooted in the arguments of scholars such as John Stuart Mill and Joel Feinberg on the state intervention in individual liberties. These scholars by developing freedom restricting principles have advocated a kind of minimalist criminalization in the sphere of public morality. Moreover, the international human rights law system, in an effort to balance cultural diversity and universal values, has endorsed public morality as one of the permissible restrictions on unrestricted civil-political liberties. In fact, following developments in the performance of governments in the field of public morality, the international human rights system, by providing a progressive interpretation of the principles governing criminalization, reject the legal moralism has attempted to defend a kind of rights-oriented criminalization that protects the rights and freedoms of vulnerable people.

This paper aims to consider some problems that challenge the criminal investigation of the cases of death in custody. While the complainants want their complaint to be recognized by the criminal justice system, systematic creation of some challenges marginalizes them and finally limit their access to justice in this kind of case. Reversing the truth, victim defamation, the control of the state on media, and arbitrary directing of the related news to the event as well as early comments of authorities before any independent investigation are some examples of the challenges ahead of the criminal investigation of death cases in prison. The paper along with using related sources to the issue of death in custody, by analyzing the content of reports, information and news as well as discourse analyzing of officials in relation to 12 cases of death in custody/prison in Iran, analyze the investigation challenges that concern the victim’s families of death in custody. Data analyzing of 12 cases of Iran show that reversing the truths related to the surrounding condition of the death and adumbrate of the event, makes it difficult to detect the real cause of the death. On the other side, defaming the victim and smearing his/her dignity or his/her family’s, distracts the attention from the misconducts of the prison officials to the failure of the victim him/herself and induces the deservedness of their death. In the same way, lack of liberty for media in reflection of the related news of cases, and bias the dependent media to the political system that generally express the cautious attitudes of the authorities, decrease the transparency of these cases. Finally, the early comments of authorities surrounding the cause of the deaths, challenge the possibility of an independent investigation in reaching to a different result of that comment.

Various views have been raised concerning the rule of law, but what have been accepted by most jurisprudents are the existing narratives in this regard. Even though the existing narrations are absolute and arbitrarily controversial in all its forms, the legislator, in Article 121 of the Criminal Code, excludes four cases of moharebeh, corruption, theft, and qazf,. It means that mere doubt does not lead to the rule of dar’e in these four cases; rather, the rule applies in other stages where no contradictory reason can be found. The present study shows that such a separation is inadequate in terms of jurisprudential basis and contradicts the general and general narratives related to the rule of dar’e. The reasons given by the scholars in justifying this separation are one-dimensional and obscure, and therefore not acceptable. The present study seeks to analyze the bases and arguments presented in order to justify the four exceptions of Article 121 of the Criminal Code.

Mountain regions are environmentally valuable, as they are home to almost twenty percent of the world’s population and many species of animals and plants. Although there is not a special criminal law concerning the protection of mountains, one can find three international conventions about them. Various international instruments have emphasized their importance. Iran is also a mountainous country. As mountains cover more than half of its area, this fact makes the protection of mountain regions one of the necessities in Iranian criminal and environmental law. But, what are the challenges of Iranian laws in relation to the protection of the mountains? According to the findings of this research, done in descriptive-analytical method and based on documentary research, there is no specific protection for mountains in the Iranian legal system. However, there are three types of crimes against these regions in that system: damages to the mountain areas in environmentally protected lands, damages to the mountains with historical and cultural identity, and illegal converting of the mountainous fields. Iranian criminal law also faces some challenges in relation to the protection of mountains, including the ambiguity of the definition of the mountain, lack of detailed criminalization, lack of intrinsic appreciation, lack of criminal responsibility in mining activities, neglecting the geoparks and inattention to the special parts of the mountainous fields.

Throughout history, the phenomenon of war, as a painful reality in human life, has always been full of suffering, and therefore the international community has tried to reduce its destructive and harmful effects by enacting international humanitarian law. In the meantime, individuals, including physicians, in some cases and in violation of their professional duties and ethical principles and by abusing this dangerous situation, in violation of international rules and the basic rules of medical professional ethics and with the help of prisoners of war under the protection of international law, unusual biological experiments during armed conflicts against these people lead to severe physical and mental injuries that, in addition to tarnishing the image of medical science, lead to one of the most heinous international crimes called "medical war crimes." The purpose of this study is to explain and analyze this conceptual approach to the phenomenon of medical war crimes and to present its examples from the perspective of international regulations and distinguish it from similar concepts to provide intellectual infrastructure. Special rules are necessary to develop the protection of victims of this range of international crimes in light of current social developments.

Although one of the requirements of the implementation of the Merida Convention is the criminalization of "bribery in the private sector", the Iranian legislature has not yet considered this issue and there is no clear approach in the judicial process in this regard. From the point of view of international instruments and comparative law today, there is no doubt that bribery in the private sphere, as well as doing it in the public sphere, can be a manifestation of financial and administrative corruption that should be specifically criminalized and punished. However, in Iranian law, the question is what is the nature of paying and receiving bribes in the private sector. And, what is the reaction to it? Findings of the research indicate this: in Iranian criminal law, according to Article 588 of the Criminal Code of 1996, a specific type of private bribery (a receipt of money or property by judges, auditors and experts) has been criminalized. The judicial practice seeks to extend this prohibition to all private sectors responsible for public services in accordance with the principles of the crime and other related provisions. In particular, it seems that the provisions and basis of the "Unanimous Vote of Procedure No. 798 of the General Assembly of the Supreme Court", which has just been issued, have made this possible even more. Because, in this vote, by considering the criterion of "public services" and considering the employees of private banks as "public service agents", the said employees are considered to be subject to Article 598 of the mentioned law. According to this rule and the stipulation of "public service officers" in Article 3 of the Law on Intensification of Punishment for Perpetrators of Embezzlement, Bribery and Fraud, there is no distinction between the mentioned crimes and a single procedure should be established for them. However, jurisprudence cannot compensate for the shortcomings of the legislation in this area.