The Practice of Imposing Life Imprisonment

Abstract

The study was written to achieve two goals at the same time. On the one hand, it makes an attempt to present the history of the Hungarian criminal legal regulation of life imprisonment from the publishing of the 1878 Criminal Code written by Karoly Csemegi (“Csemegi-kódex”) until our days and on the other it analyses the verdicts made by the Debrecen Regional Court of Appeal from the point of view of imposing life imprisonment. The study contains the examination of 32 cases concerning 39 accused persons. 7 of the defendants were sentenced to life imprisonment without parole as a final and non-appealable judgement. The findings derived from the analyses of the cases are contained in the tables shown in supplements I-XIV. According to the conclusion the regulations of Act C 2012 are suitable to accomplish the aims of punishment in every aspect.