The relationship between the offense of entrusting a vehicle and manslaughter

Abstract

The legal doctrine and the judicial practice are currently in a labyrinth of opinions regarding the relationship between the offense of entrusting a vehicle (obstacle offence) and manslaughter. The stake of the legal doctrine efforts to emerge from this labyrinth is not limited to providing the judiciary with useful benchmarks for resolving cases that pose this issue. On the contrary, the intellectual exercise it entails is complex, prompting discussions about the objective side of offenses and their defining traits, the institution of causality with its multitude of more or less effective theories, discussions about the institution of guilt, or reflections on the fairness behind a legal classification in relation to the principle of subjective liability in Romanian criminal law. Thus, the solutions reached by the legal doctrine in this matter are intended for generalization, in the sense that they can serve as a starting point for analysing similar hypotheses involving other offences or legal institutions. The relationship between the two offenses highlights their importance as analytical tools in the study of obstacle offenses, an area still insufficiently explored by the national legal doctrine. Without claiming exhaustiveness or proposing definitive solutions, this endeavour aims to assess the current state of the debate in the Romanian legal doctrine and to contribute to this relevant discussion.

In this regard, in the development of the syllogism we propose, we will briefly analyse the state of the legal doctrine and practice in connection with the relationship between the two offences (section 1). Subsequently, we will establish the essential premises of the legal rationale, starting with the essential traits of the offence of entrusting a vehicle (subsection 2.1.), with an emphasis on its inclusion in the category of obstacle offences (subsection 2.2.), and then presenting the atypical way of addressing liability for the offence of manslaughter (subsection 2.3.). After that, we will determine to what extent the action of entrusting a vehicle can be considered a legal cause of the victim's death, using the theory of the objective imputation of the result, but combined with elements of other important institutions, such as the theory of mediate perpetration (subsections 2.4.3. and 2.4.4.).