Bill 451.

Summary.

The bill amends Article 52 of the Criminal Code (Código Penal) to define imprisonment as a temporary or lifelong deprivation of personal liberty. It provides for the sentence to be served in a penitentiary under Panamanian state jurisdiction, subject to cases covered by international agreements approved by Panama (Panamá) that allow the sentence to be served in another country. It also allows imprisonment to be served in places designated by the competent judge or magistrate under the Criminal Code. For a sentence imposed for a single act or multiple offenses, the proposed duration ranges from six months to life imprisonment.

Proposed Article 132 assigns a sentence of twenty to thirty years’ imprisonment to the offense referred to in the preceding article when any listed circumstance applies. Those circumstances include an offense against a close relative or a person under the offender’s guardianship, even if the guardianship has not been judicially declared. They also cover an offense committed knowingly against a pregnant woman, children twelve years of age or younger, or an adult aged seventy or older, as well as an act of discrimination or racism.

The same sentencing range would apply where the act involves premeditation, treachery or the use of poison, or is committed for a trivial motive. The provision includes an offense against a public servant because of the duties that person performs. It also covers an act committed immediately after another offense to conceal it, secure impunity, or because the intended objective could not be achieved. Its final circumstance concerns a firearm discharged against another person, without lawful justification, in a place frequented by people at the time of the act.

The bill adds Article 132-C to prescribe life imprisonment for a person who causes another’s death by an atrocious method of execution, use of fire, removal of a vital organ, immersion, or asphyxiation. The same sentence would apply to a person who, within the same act, event, or circumstance, kills two or more people simultaneously or successively, provided the acts are directly connected. It would also apply to a serial killer and to a person who commits homicide in the context of offenses against collective security that create a common danger to society.

The bill identifies the amendment of Articles 52 and 132 and the addition of Article 132-C to the consolidated text of the Criminal Code. It provides that the law would take effect on the day after its promulgation. Submitted for consideration by the National Assembly (Asamblea Nacional), its provisions could concern judges, magistrates, people prosecuted for these offenses, victims and their families, and the penitentiary sector.