Argentina In
Argentina, crimes of passion are treated seriously and the
Penal Code of Argentina provides harsh punishments for killing a romantic or sexual partner under the aggravating factor of
vínculo (bond) between the victim and the perpetrator. If the accused is found guilty without mitigating factors, the only possible sentence for this aggravated type of homicide is
life imprisonment. The sentence of life imprisonment can be mitigated by mental defect (even if legally sane) and others such as heavy influence of negative emotions, which is known as
emoción violenta (violent emotion).
Australia In
Australia, as in other
common law jurisdictions, crimes of passion have traditionally been subjected to the partial defense of
provocation, which converts what would have been
murder into
manslaughter. In the early 21st Century, the defence of provocation came under increased criticism, and, as a result, legal changes have abolished or restricted its application: in 2003,
Tasmania became the first state to abolish the partial defence of provocation in murder charges; the next state to abolish it was
Victoria, in 2005; followed by
Western Australia in 2008;
ACT and
Northern Territory have amended the laws to exclude non-violent homosexual sexual advances, in 2004 and 2006, respectively.
Brazil Killing of wives due to adultery has been traditionally treated very leniently in
Brazil, in court cases where husbands claimed the "legitimate defense of their honor" (
legitima defesa da honra) as justification for the killing. Although this defense was not explicitly stipulated in the 20th-century Criminal Code, it has been successfully pleaded by lawyers throughout the 20th century, in particular in the countryside, though less so in the coastal big cities. In 1991 Brazil's Supreme Court explicitly rejected the "honor defense" as having no basis in Brazilian law. In the 21st century, Brazil has improved the legal status of women, with the new Civil Code of 2002; and through other legal changes such as repealing in 2005 the provision that exempted a rapist from punishment if he married his victim, and enacting laws against
domestic violence in Brazil.
France of the 19th century often justified crimes of passion, as is the case of writer
Alexandre Dumas fils, and influenced the views of the upper classes, including those sitting on juries, about such homicides. Crimes of passion have a strong association with France. Prior to 1975, the French Penal Code of 1810 stated at article 324 that "in the case of adultery, provided for by article 336, murder committed upon the wife as well as upon her accomplice, at the moment when the husband shall have caught them in the fact, in the house where the husband and wife dwell, is excusable" [meaning a punishment of 1 to 5 years, according to article 326]. In practice, however, many domestic violence crimes resulted in acquittal by the juries, which alarmed jurists and led them to question whether the citizen jurors of the Third Republic were competent to render justice. In
Luxembourg, Article 413 (repealed in 2003) provided mitigating circumstances for murder, assault and injury of an adulterous spouse. Article 324 of the French penal code was copied by
Middle Eastern Arab countries. According to the Honour Based Violence Awareness Network, the penal codes that were enacted under the
Napoleonic Empire influenced the development of laws in North Africa and the Middle East. These laws permit reduced sentences for murders that are "related to honour". The French Article 324 inspired
Jordan's Article 340 and Article 98. The 1858 Ottoman Penal Code's Article 188 was also inspired by Article 324. Both the French Article 324 and Ottoman article 188 were drawn on to create Jordan's Article 340, which was retained after a 1944 revision of laws, and still applies to this day. The Napoleonic Code has been an extremely influential code. Many laws around the world have been modeled on it. The code was applied to all territories under Napoleon's control and has also influenced several other countries in Europe and South America. In addition to leniency to crimes of passion, this code enshrined the unquestionable authority of men over their families and deprived women of any individual rights, and reduced the rights of
illegitimate children. It also reintroduced colonial slavery. The Napoleonic Code was also influential in the "
marry-your-rapist laws" (in force in France until 1994), which were exported to other parts of the world too. France also had a strong culture of
dueling meant to uphold honor, and France was called by
National Geographic "the dueling capital of Europe". This dueling culture was also exported to Latin America, and was extremely strong in
Uruguay (see below the section on Uruguay). In
Corsica, a place influenced throughout the centuries both by Italian and French culture, there was a strong custom of
vendetta, which required Corsicans to kill anyone who wronged their family honor. Between 1821 and 1852, no fewer than 4,300 vendetta killings were perpetrated in Corsica. Stories about adulterous women, suicides and homicides committed due to 'passion', featured prominently in French literature in the 19th century, and "In literature as in life, unconventional women needed to be severely punished lest their defiant attitudes inspire further acts of rebellion".
Haiti Haiti, a former French colony, had a crime of passion law similar to that of France until 2005, when it was abolished. Adultery was also decriminalized in 2005.
Portugal Portugal has a long tradition of tolerating, and even encouraging, crimes of passion, under the "
legitimate defense of honor", which was also brought to
Brazil. During the authoritarian
Estado Novo regime, (1933–1974) women's rights were restricted. Although improvements in tackling domestic violence have been achieved, particularly with legal reforms in 1982, lenient punishments continue to be given by judges, partly due to the strongly patriarchal ideology that still persists in the judicial system. Although the Supreme Court of Justice in recent years has, in most cases, rejected the defense of "passion" in domestic homicides, such defense remains open to use due to the legal framework of
murder in Portuguese law, namely article 133. This article is very broad in scope, is subject to interpretation, and has a very low punishment of only 1 to 5 years, which due to the regulations of the Portuguese Penal Code, usually results in suspended sentences. This article, called "Privileged homicide" (
Homicídio privilegiado) states that when the murder takes place under an understandable violent emotion, compassion, despair or other socially or morally relevant motive, such as to significantly diminish the murderer's degree of guilt, the punishment in this case is 1 to 5 years. Furthermore, the Criminal Code under Articles 71 and 72, provides guidelines to sentencing for crimes, making reference to honorabale motives and provocation by the victim. which states that "Parties shall take the necessary legislative or other measures to ensure that, in criminal proceedings initiated following the commission of any of the acts of violence covered by the scope of this Convention, culture, custom, religion, tradition or so‐called “honour” shall not be regarded as justification for such acts. This covers, in particular, claims that the victim has transgressed cultural, religious, social or traditional norms or customs of appropriate behaviour." Portugal was one of the last European countries to decriminalize adultery - the adultery law (which treated female and male adultery differently) was repealed in 1982, and the punishment for female adultery in the 20th century in Portugal was one of the most severe in the Western world. With regard to homicide law, before 1975, the law provided for a symbolic punishment of only 6 months exile from the district for killing of a spouse or daughter under 21 caught in the act of adultery/premarital sex. The
Decree-Law 262/75 on 27 May 1975 repealed article 372 of the Penal Code which provided for such mitigation; nevertheless courts continued to routinely use general mitigation factors to give lenient punishments for husbands who killed out of jealousy or relationship breakup throughout the 1980s and 1990s; the concept of holding women as partly responsible for crimes committed against them extended to other crimes too, such as rape and kidnapping; for example in 1989 the Portuguese Supreme Court of Justice ruled that two hitchhiking young tourists who were kidnapped and raped had contributed to the crimes committed against them. In 2009 a man was cleared of murder but convicted of manslaughter by reason of provocation for stabbing his partner and his best friend to death when he found them having sex. Although
provocation in English law was abolished on 4 October 2010 by section 56(1) of the
Coroners and Justice Act 2009, it was replaced by a relatively similar by more narrowly drafted defence of "
loss of control" created by section 54. There has been considerable controversy regarding the application by the courts of the new law; although section 55 states "(6) In determining whether a loss of self-control had a qualifying trigger (...) (c) the fact that a thing done or said constituted sexual infidelity is to be disregarded", in a controversial decision by
Lord Judge in
R v Clinton in the Court of Appeal, Lord Judge interpreted the new offence as allowing for sexual infidelity to count under the third prong of the new defence (see Baker and Zhao 2012). This decision has received heavy criticism from academics.
Vera Baird has also been very critical of the decision, writing, "It seems that parliament says infidelity doesn't count and the court says it does."
Uruguay In
Uruguay, crimes of passion were legally tolerated until 2017. In certain circumstances, the law exonerated a perpetrator when a killing or a battery was committed due to "passion provoked by adultery". Article 36 of the Criminal Code provided for this: "
Artículo 36. (La pasión provocada por el adulterio) La pasión provocada por el adulterio faculta al Juez para exonerar de pena por los delitos de homicidio y de lesiones, siempre que concurran los requisitos siguientes: :
1. Que el delito se cometa por el cónyuge que sorprendiera infraganti al otro cónyuge y que se efectúe o contra el amante. :
2. Que el autor tuviera buenos antecedentes y que la oportunidad para cometer el delito no hubiera sido provocada o simplemente facilitada, mediando conocimiento anterior de la infidelidad conyugal." Translation: "Article 36. (The passion provoked by adultery) The passion provoked by adultery empowers the court to exempt from punishment for the crimes of homicide and injury, provided that the following conditions are present: • The offense is committed by one spouse against the other spouse whom he or she has caught in the act, or against the lover. • The perpetrator has a good record and the opportunity to commit the crime was not provoked or facilitated by prior knowledge of the marital infidelity." Since 2013, there have been ongoing political efforts to remove this provision from the Criminal Code. On December 22, 2017, Article 36 of the Criminal Code was modified to remove the crime of passion. Uruguay is a country where the case of violence against women has been considered a
paradox and debated in the context that Uruguay is otherwise considered one of the most liberal countries in Latin America; nevertheless, domestic violence is a very serious problem; according to a 2018 United Nations study, Uruguay has the second-highest rate of killings of women by current or former partners in Latin America, after Dominican Republic. Despite having a reputation of being a progressive country, Uruguay has lagged behind with regard to its approach to domestic violence; The culture of Uruguay has been strongly influenced by
French culture, through French immigrants in the 19th century (see
French Uruguayans), and, as such, the French concept of crime of passion was brought to Uruguay (see section above on France). The French
dueling culture, meant to uphold
honor, was also exported to Latin America, and was extremely strong in Uruguay. Uruguay's honor culture has been prominent well into the 20th century, and duels survived in Uruguay until the 1970s, long after the practice had been abandoned in other parts of the Western world. Duels in Uruguay were widespread in the early 20th century, were legalized in 1920, in an unusual political move; and remained legal until 1992. == Examples==