Abstract

The Victim’s Retaliatory Response to Offences Against His Honour
And Physical Integrity and the Principle of ‘de sua malitia nemo
debet commodum reportare’

 Summary
The aim of this paper is to discuss a victim’s retaliatory action
against the perpetrator of an offence against his honour and physical
integrity as a circumstance admitting the waiving of penalisation. The
possibility for the offender to evade penalisation simply because the
victim retaliated seems to contradict the principle that the offender
should draw no benefit from the offence (de sua malitia nemo debet
commodum reportare). The regulation adopted in the Polish Criminal
Code (kodeks karny, k.k.) appears to favour the offender who received
a retaliatory response from the victim, over and above the situation in
which the victim took no measures to retaliate against the offender.
The article also highlights the difference in the legal consequences of
the waiving of penalties respectively for the perpetrator and the retaliating victim. This differentiation, which puts the retaliating victim
in a worse position than the offender, also appears to be incompatible
with the cited principle of criminalisation.