刑法中基于生命法益考量的死亡判定标准之选择

The Choice of Death Criterion Based on Legal Interests of Life in Criminal Law

随着医学认知的发展,越来越多的法学学者主张脑死亡标准。目前我国刑事立法并未明确死亡判定标准,司法实务通常采取心肺死亡标准。在具体法律评价中,采用何种死亡判定标准或如何处理脑死亡标准与心肺死亡标准之间的关系,对判断行为人是否侵害被害人的生命以及在刑法上作出评价将产生重大影响。刑法上如何选择死亡判定标准,目前存在“一元论”“二元论”“修正一元论”三种各有不同程度瑕疵的聚讼学说;而基于“生命法益”保护目的之考量,刑法上死亡判定标准宜采用脑死亡标准与心肺死亡标准之“等效统一说”更为妥当,其比前三者有更为明显的适用优势,易于避免司法实务中法律理解与适用上的冲突。

With the development of medical cognition, more and more legal scholars advocate the criterion of brain death. Current Chinese criminal legislation does not specify the criteria for determining death, and the standard of cardiopulmonary death is usually adopted in judicial practice. In the specific legal evaluation, which death criteria to use or how to deal with the relationship between brain death criteria and cardiopulmonary death criteria will have a great impact on the judgment of whether the perpetrator infringes on the victim’s life and the evaluation of criminal law. As regard to the choice the death criterion in criminal law, there are three kinds of litigant theories,namely "monism", "dualism" and "modified monism", each with different degrees of defects. Based on the consideration of the protection purpose of "legal interests of life", it is more appropriate to adopt the "equivalent unification" of brain death criteria and cardiopulmonary death criteria in criminal law, which has more obvious application advantages than the previous three, and is easy to avoid the conflict of legal understanding and application in judicial practice.