Victim’s special vulnerability: searching for a basis for the new aggravation of the offences against life

Abstract

This article analyses the new aggravation circumstance of homicide and assassination: “victim under 16 years or especial vulnerability due to age, illness or disability”. This circumstance raises two major issues: what is its basis? and are treachery o abuse of superiority compatible with it? These are precisely the questions that this article attempts to answer, in which, in addition to explaining the various solutions that the doctrine and changing jurisprudence have offered, it finally suggests a restrictive interpretation of the aggravating circumstance.