Principle of alterity or identity vs. principle of self-responsability.

Abstract

The objective non-imputation of an injury to the conduct of the third party in some of those cases in which the victim accepts or allows the injury risk, cannot be held satisfactorily with the mere argument of impunity in the participation in the suicide (which is ruled in German law, but not in other Criminal Codes) or with the purported self-responsibility principle. The above-mentioned non-imputation has to be based on the principle of alterity or otherness, or non-identity between perpetrator and victim. Roxin’s distinction between unpunished participation in those cases in which the victim puts him/herself at risk, and the other cases where the victim allows that someone else puts him/her at risk -punishable, the last ones, with exception of some cases that are comparable to the first ones-, is correct in principle. But such a comparison cannot depend on the mere common and exact knowledge of the risk on the part of the victim and the perpetrator, but on that there is a shared control of the risk on the part of the victim and the third party.