The "act in place of another" in the Colombian penal code: approximation to the background, scope and issues most relevant to the formula of the article 29. Paragraph 3

Abstract

This work provides a general view about the concept “acting instead of another person”, which was introduced as a novelty in colombian criminal law after the Criminal Code of 2000 came into effect. The doctrine developments concerning this concept are scant due to its recent introduction; this is why the first sections of this work are intended to approach its history, foundation and scope of application based mainly on the foreign doctrine. However, this approach also takes into account the special features presented by the clause of Article 29-3 of the CC., which seems to extend authoring to those subjects, representing a legal or natural person, who make the fact defined as punishable but do not hold the quality demanded by the criminal type, no matter this quality concurs with the represented person. The last section of this work presents some problematic aspects derived from the mentioned clause, as well as their possible solutions through a restrictive interpretation of the analyzed legal formula.