Draft bill 108.

Summary.

The draft bill proposes amending Article 135 of the Criminal Code (código penal), which addresses inducing or assisting another person to die by suicide. It retains imprisonment of two to five years for a person who induces or assists another person to die by suicide, provided the suicide occurs. Alongside that rule, it establishes circumstances involving violent conduct that causes or induces suicide and assigns them a different penalty.

Where a woman’s suicide is caused or induced as a consequence of physical, psychological, sexual, economic or gender-based violence, the text proposes fifteen to twenty years of imprisonment and multidisciplinary therapeutic treatment. This provision requires the violence to have been a determining factor in producing the outcome. It therefore connects the violent conduct to the suicide and treats this circumstance separately from the general rule on inducing or assisting suicide.

The same penalty would apply to a person who systematically, deliberately or repeatedly harasses, accuses, stalks, pursues, besieges, threatens, intimidates, blackmails, humiliates, controls, psychologically abuses or otherwise uses violence against another person, thereby causing or inducing that person’s suicide. The provision covers taking advantage of a special condition of vulnerability or creating such a condition through a continuing pattern of violence. It also covers the use of that violence against a person with a mental health illness, disorder or condition. Under these circumstances, the conduct must cause or induce the person’s suicide for the proposed provision to apply.

Proposed Article 135-A addresses how to determine the patterns described in the preceding article. It permits consideration of repeated violent conduct, communications between the victim and the perpetrator, witness testimony, digital evidence, expert reports and prior instances of violence, among other elements. It also permits consideration of any other evidence admitted into the proceedings. To establish the criminal liability provided for, the Public Prosecutor’s Office (Ministerio Publico) would have to prove, with sufficient evidence, a causal link between the conduct attributed to the perpetrator and the victim’s suicide.

Article 3 declares the proposed law to be a matter of public order and social interest and provides that it applies to cases still under investigation. Its provisions concern the Public Prosecutor’s Office and people involved in criminal investigations of suicides linked to inducement, assistance or violence. The subject matter may also be of interest to victim support and mental health sectors.