Multiple murder punishable by reviewable permanent prison

Abstract

The symbolic importance of both the maximum penalty and the main crime punished with it have been reinforced in two ways in the 2015 reform of spanish Penal Code: the reviewable permanent prison for aggravated murder is reintroduced, and serial murder, as its most aggravated form, is typified in art. 140.2 CP. But the unclear wording of this precept raises various interpretative problems concerning what is meant by serial murder: how many murders must be present, whether they must have been subject to prior conviction or not, what is meant by “death” and whether the penalty established is a combined one for all the murders. In this paper an attempt is made to find coherent solutions to these questions.