Interpersonal conflicts motivated by jealousy or revenge as a condition for committing violent crimes

Sergeeva Anzhelika Anatol'evna PhD in Law Associate Professor, Department of Criminal Law and Procedure, St. Petersburg Institute (Branch) All-Russian State University of Justice 199178, Russia, Cankt-Peterburg, g. Saint Petersburg, ul. 10-Ya liniya v.o., 19 lokhi@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

Conflict situations that arise between people for various reasons can become a condition for committing violent crimes, without being their cause, since the determination of criminal behavior is objective. According to expert criminological estimates, the share of such crimes in the structure of registered crime is about 11% and remains fairly stable ^{[1, p. 14]}. Acts that did not entail consequences in the form of death or serious harm to the victim's health have a high latency, since due to personal relationships (marriage, cohabitation, acquaintance), victims do not seek to convict the perpetrators ^{[2, pp. 86-121]}. At the same time, interpersonal conflict persists and may cause the commission of a more serious crime in the future. Experts in the field of conflictology rightly consider such situations counterproductive ^{[3, pp. 201-203]}, which seems right and requires overcoming. Studies of the socio-psychological nature of interpersonal conflicts have been successfully implemented in the works of A. Y. Antsupov, N. V. Grishina, V. V. Druzhinin, M. P. Krapivin, and the definitions introduced by them into scientific circulation do not require corrections. In the legal doctrine and in criminological science, the study of the motivation of violent crimes and its connection with moral norms and emotional states based on feelings of jealousy and revenge, or a combination of them, is quite in demand ^{[4, pp. 118-132; 5, pp. 71-76]}. Such studies were carried out by many reputable scientists (Yu. M. Antonyan, V. N. Kudryavtsev, V. E. Eminov, etc.). Recognizing the value of the results obtained, it should be noted that there are some gaps in the research based on insufficiently clear formulation of moral norms and insufficiently attentive attitude to the unacceptability of these emotional states by these norms (in other words, - to the immoral nature of base motives). Therefore, the study of the correlation of moral norms and tolerance to feelings of jealousy and revenge has a potential scientific novelty, expanding doctrinal ideas about the unacceptability of violence motivated by these feelings. Taking into account the development of the concepts of conflict, jealousy, revenge and morality at the interdisciplinary scientific level, it is of interest to narrow the problem field of research to the measurement of such a ratio.

Within the framework of the proposed article, the correlation of the elements of jealousy and revenge in the motivation structure of violent crimes committed on the basis of interpersonal conflict is investigated. The methodology of the research is based on the criteria of dialectical cognition, as well as a set of generally recognized scientific methods, through which the ratio of criminal law and moral norms is set, based on the unacceptability of manifestations of criminal aggression motivated by jealousy or revenge. Among these methods, it is necessary to distinguish analysis and synthesis, deduction and induction, abstraction and generalization, as well as formal-logical and axiomatic. To solve the main task of the study, analysis and synthesis were the most important, since with their help the establishment of the correlation of concepts of different social nature becomes optimal. To illustrate the author's reasoning, a selective generalization of judicial practice in criminal cases of murders as the most serious violent crimes, in which the subject acts under the influence of motivation related to jealousy, revenge or personal hostility, is made.  

It should also be noted that when committing a specific crime, the motivation of the subject is not obvious, and in this case it seems appropriate to raise the question of assessing his actions not only by criminal law norms, but also by moral norms.

In practice, there are cases when a particularly serious violent crime (for example, murder) is committed outwardly for no reason. This testifies to the special immorality and cynicism of the guilty, who feels an imaginary permissiveness and – often – realizes the desire for self-affirmation. For example, a citizen who killed two people under the following circumstances was found guilty by the Kaluga Regional Court of committing a crime under paragraphs "a" and paragraph "i" of Part 2 of Article 105 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. Having purchased a hunting crossbow, he went to a remote area of the Moscow region, where he shot a man he did not know who was fishing in the river with a shot from this crossbow. About a month later, on the territory of the Kaluga region, he committed a similar murder of a victim engaged in fishing. The intent to deprive strangers of their lives arose, as the court found, after the purchase of a crossbow, one of the premeditated parameters for the implementation of the intent was the sudden firing of a shot while being in conditions that preclude the detection of these actions by the victim or other persons. Refusing to change the sentence, the Judicial Board for Criminal Cases of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation indicated that the presence of hooligan motives was imputed to the convicted person correctly (definition of 09/20/2011 No. 85-011-15SP). Although the murders were committed in conditions of non-obviousness, the very fact of the consecutive deprivation of the lives of two people without a pronounced motivation indicates an expression of obvious disrespect for society, denial of the value of human life and signs characterizing the motives specified in paragraph "i" of Part 2 of Article 105 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. There is no doubt about the qualification of what the convict did as the murder of two persons under paragraph "a" of Part 2 of Article 105 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. As A. L. Ivanov rightly notes, this type of murder implies a subjective awareness of the successive deprivation of the lives of several people ^{[6, pp. 46-50]}, so the time gap does not matter here.

Interestingly enough, the resolution of the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the RSFSR "On judicial practice on premeditated murders" dated 22.12.1992 No. 15, which has now become invalid, contained an explanation on the differentiation of murder committed from hooligan motives from murders with a different motivation. In paragraph 6 of this resolution, the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the RSFSR explicitly stated that a murder committed out of jealousy, revenge and other motives arising from personal relationships, under no circumstances should be qualified as committed out of hooligan motives. In other words, the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the RSFSR did not see in the structure of the motives of jealousy or revenge a sign of obvious disrespect for society or for generally accepted moral norms. In relation to hooligan motives, he singled out such, and also characterized the behavior of the guilty as an open challenge to public order and a desire to oppose himself to others, demonstrating a disdainful attitude towards them. Indeed, if there is a motive of jealousy or revenge, the culprit does not challenge public order, but in terms of the lack of disregard for generally accepted moral norms, an unambiguous statement is impossible. In fact, both with the motive of jealousy and with the motive of revenge, the subject realizes his imaginary exclusivity in a certain way, on the basis of which he has a tolerant attitude towards violence, lynching as a way of resolving personal conflict. Regarding the generally accepted norms of morality, the neglect of which in the modern legal positions of the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation is characterized by hooligan motives (paragraph 12 of the current resolution of 27.01.1999 "On judicial practice in cases of murder (Article 105 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation)"), we can conclude the following. There is no legal definition of this construction. The criminalizing feature of some crimes is actually immorality, in criminal law terminology - the presence of base motives (for example, in Articles 153, 155 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), – S. V. Anoshchenkova justifiably notes ^{[7, pp. 33-47]}. More radical judgments, which can be combined under the general heading "any crime is immoral", were expressed, although in different volumes, by many well-known scientists in classical works on criminal law: A. A. Herzenzon believed immorality to be one of the signs of a crime ^{[8, p. 41]}; A. A. Piontkovsky believed that to rank it in this quality should not be, because it is meaningfully absorbed by the sign of illegality ^{[9, p. 29]}; Yu. M. Antonyan, V. N. Kudryavtsev and V. E. Eminov, without affecting the concept of crime, endow the criminal's personality with antisocial views and a negative attitude to moral values ^{[10, p. 34]}. Respecting the positions and authority of these scientists, we note that the nature and degree of immorality may vary depending on the structure and types of criminal behavior. In addition, if we assume that each crime is immoral, then it should be assumed that the immoral behavior of the victim, which was the reason for the commission of the crime, is a circumstance excluding the criminality of the act, and in accordance with Part 1 of Article 61 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, this is one of the circumstances mitigating the punishment. Accordingly, the normative approach in this case is narrower than the doctrinal one. Criminal law illegality, in turn, acts as one of the normative signs of a crime and, as is known, is interpreted as a contradiction of criminal behavior to specific criminal law prohibitions. With regard to immorality, it can be noted that the authors mentioned above consider it as a clear contradiction of the subject's behavior to the moral norms existing in society, and this approach is implemented both in general theoretical and in industry studies.   

N. S. Tagantsev categorically opposed the identification of the criminal and immoral ^{[11, p. 24]}. The phenomenon of moral normativity is inherently characterized by plurality and contextuality, by virtue of which the absorption and assimilation of interactions allow integration into a common moral continuum ^{[12, pp. 10-19]}. Moral norms also have a sign of compatibility, which makes it possible to maintain a certain meaningful unity of morality in various social groups ^{[13, p. 5-24]}, however, it overly complicates both the category of immorality and its application to the characterization of criminal behavior. The moral law, which formed one of the foundations of I. Kant's teaching, possessed the property of universality, universality, but until now the problem of discursive-normative communication, in which the subject acts by appealing to his understanding of the right and reasonable, has not been solved ^{[14, pp. 79-88]}.

At the same time, both jealousy and revenge, although in different proportions, are endowed with inconsistency with generally accepted norms of morality. So, the latter undoubtedly include the concepts of honor, dignity, truthfulness, loyalty to justice, recognition of the value of human life, independence, personal space. The balance of these categories in a person's consciousness can be extremely fragile and – in connection with the sensory sphere that determines the development of motives of jealousy and revenge – subject to deformation. In turn, jealousy and revenge are special emotional states of a negative orientation that have arisen in the mind of the subject on the basis of personal relationships with the victim (victim) and form in him a desire to harm his (her) life or health. At the same time, jealousy is based on a demonstration of personal feelings and unwillingness to lose communicative interaction with the object of sympathy, whereas revenge, on the contrary, is a desire to "punish" the victim (victim) for a really or imaginary act of dishonest or immoral nature committed against the guilty.            

Jealousy as a way to preserve personal relationships can be directed both to the victim – the object of sympathy, and to the victim – the imaginary or real source of the destruction of this sympathy. At the same time, the culprit considers himself protecting both his own honor and personal well-being, personal relations with a particular victim. Under these circumstances, the victim and the perpetrator may be in a marital or partnership relationship, or a potential "destroyer" of a marriage or partnership becomes a victim of criminal actions, and the reason for their commission is real or imaginary treason.

Judicial practice proceeds from the same. For example, a court verdict under Part 1 of Article 105 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation convicted a defendant for the murder of a cohabitant, who put forward a version that the victim provoked him with her behavior, and he acted out of jealousy. In the cassation ruling of 18.01.2022 No. 77-91/2022, the Seventh Cassation Court of General Jurisdiction indicated that the arguments about the immoral behavior of the victim were not confirmed at the hearing, and the quarrel with the defendant took place on the basis of his unilateral claims regarding her infidelity. In the cassation ruling of 09.02.2022 in case No. 77-467/2022, the Sixth Cassation Court of General Jurisdiction indicated that the feeling of jealousy itself, which caused the emergence of personal hostility, cannot indicate illegal or immoral behavior of the victim.

In the cassation ruling of 31.03.2022 in case No. 77-1380/2022, the Sixth Cassation Court of General Jurisdiction indicated that the arguments about the existence of a state of necessary defense, during which the convicted person committed the murder of the victim, are groundless. Guided by the motive of jealousy, the convict, with a knife brought with him, inflicted a fatal wound on the victim, whom he accused of having an intimate relationship with a citizen with whom he cohabited and – presumably – convicted of treason.

Using the construction "revenge on the grounds of jealousy", V. N. Vinokurov, in turn, concludes that it reflects the direction of the actions of the perpetrator and allows us to determine those relations that are harmed in the first place, namely, relations in the sphere of inviolability of life ^{[15, pp. 131-141]}. Agreeing with the thesis formulated by V. K. Glistin in the late 70s of the last century ^{[16, p. 83]}, the scientist emphasizes that the crime violates a wide range of public relations, both protected and not protected by criminal law. Within the framework of his proposed construction, of course, the motive of revenge gives increased intensity to illegal actions aimed at harming life and health, and jealousy acting as its basis serves as an excuse, the presence of which the subject considers justifying the destruction of the protected existence of other intangible benefits (for example, privacy, the right to create a family).

However, revenge based on jealousy is, rather, a way of self–affirmation in conditions when the personal relationship between the perpetrator and the victim is terminated, and the violent assault is committed on the basis of a desire to compensate for the cognitive dissonance that has arisen in the mind of the perpetrator. In support of this thesis, it is also possible to cite the specific legal positions of the courts.

For example, in case No. 43-UD21-19, the Judicial Board for Criminal Cases of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation issued a ruling dated 01.02.2022, according to which it stated the immorality of the behavior of the victim, who, while married, maintained a relationship with her lover. Convicted under paragraph "a" of Part 2 of Article 105 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, the spouse of the victim, according to the court, committed a crime motivated by jealousy, resentment and personal hostility, but not in a state of passion, because in fact he no longer maintained marital relations with her, lived separately. In this case, the court found that he objected to the divorce, but the victim did not want to keep the family. In other words, the intellectual component of the convict's intent included awareness of the termination of marital relations, but he also assumed himself to be "competent" to carry out violence against his wife and her acquaintance.

In relation to situations where there is no marital relationship between the perpetrator and the victim, the courts generally do not focus on the immorality of treason, but reflect both jealousy and revenge as a basis for the emergence of intent to commit a violent crime. For example, the Presidium of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation in its resolution No. 335p2001pr dated 23.05.2001 stressed that the convict was guided by both of these feelings when, returning home, he found his cohabitant sleeping on a bed with another man and inflicted multiple fatal wounds to both. At the same time, the conflicts between the convict and the victim were constant, he was absent from home, because he was detained after he started a quarrel with a cohabitant, and she was forced to call police officers. In Resolution No. 466-P06 of 10/25/2006, the Presidium of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation indicated that the convict, guided by a sense of jealousy and revenge, inflicted multiple blows with an axe to a man whom he found sleeping on a bed with his ex-wife; at the same time, the convict reliably knew that she was going to marry this man and was already living together. In the above situations, the motive of jealousy and revenge was realized both in relation to two persons and in relation to one. From this it can be concluded that by committing a violent crime, the subject considers himself in a fully structured or truncated format to compensate for the negative experiences that have arisen in connection with the termination of personal relations with the object of sympathy. Jealousy and revenge, indeed, in such cases are identified to the point of confusion. 

Interpersonal conflict involves conflict interaction of two or more parties ^{[17, p. 70]}. As a "state of personality structure" ^{[18, p. 45]}, it reflects different value orientations and, as it seems, different perceptions of the same values due to the position of an individual in a social group and his inner worldview. Emotional states generated by jealousy and revenge neutralize the idea of the inadmissibility of aggression and violence. Interpersonal conflict as a means of resolving contradictions ^{[19, p. 11]} hardly has an application to socially dangerous behavior.

Summing up, we can conclude that jealousy, revenge or a combination of them play an important role in the formation of motivation for violent crimes, the condition for the commission of which is interpersonal conflict. At the same time, the consciousness of the subject has a distorted perception of the essence of moral norms, due to which a tolerant attitude towards violence addressed to the second participant in the conflict is formed. The intellectual element of the perpetrator's intent is "fueled" by false notions of self-esteem, loyalty, justice, so that he considers himself "competent" to use violence.

The revealed features of criminal behavior are of interest for further developments in the field of prevention of interpersonal conflicts. Taking into account the process of formation of motivation for violent crimes, in the center of which is an arbitrary perception of moral and disregard for legal norms, is necessary for the correct qualification of the deed and the determination of a fair penalty.