Treachery Explanations

Alevosía is a notion that, in the field of law, is used with reference to what an individual does to guarantee the concretion of a crime against another subject without there being a risk for him. It is, therefore, a circumstance that aggravates the responsibility of the person who commits the crime.

Treachery is associated with acting on insurance. It involves the use of methods or means that ensure the crime by preventing the victim from successfully defending himself or a third party from intervening. Therefore, treachery is considered an aggravating factor when judging the event in question.

It is common for the notion of treachery to be used when the victim is defenseless and the offender takes advantage of that state. Take the case of a sex offender who abuses a child. Due to his psychological and physical condition, the child is in a situation of inferiority with respect to the adult: he is not in a position to defend himself. In this way, the attacker guarantees the crime without risk. In this case, the abuse has the aggravating circumstance of treachery.

When the criminal stalks his victim and ambushes him, there can also be talk of treachery. This occurs if a kidnapper monitors a person’s movements for several weeks to ensure that they can successfully capture them.

According to Digopaul, another form of treachery is linked to the intention of hiding the aggression so as not to be discovered. Suppose a man poisons his partner to collect insurance by putting a few drops of a toxic product in his drink. Said action could be classified as treacherous.

If we focus on classical criminal doctrine, we will find that one of the most common examples of treachery that usually appears is the murder of Julius Caesar: Marco Junius Brutus Cepion, generally known as Brutus, took advantage of his friendship with the Roman politician to bring He carried out his plan to take his life, knowing that she would not suspect him. Precisely, he relied on the security that Julius Caesar placed in him to lead the conspiracy that ended in fatality.

Regarding the ways, instruments or situations in which a person can rely to guarantee the success of their future crimes, the doctrine distinguishes the following three cases of malicious murder, also known simply as cases of treachery:

* treacherous or proditory crime: it is a crime that must be followed by a process of observation, of cautious waiting (stalking) or of concealment, that is, that the offender hides for a time. The term proditor is defined as something that belongs to treason, that includes it or that is related to it, and that is why it is normal for this type of treachery to be appreciated in the type of homonymous homicide;

* use, when the victim is defenseless: as exposed in previous examples, the criminal takes advantage of the impossibility of defending himself that his victim has;

* insidious procedure: a crime that the author himself seeks to hide, to make it look like an accident. The most common example in this case is the use of poison to commit murder.

As a proper name, « Alevosía » is the title of an album and a song by Luis Eduardo Aute, a well-known Spanish singer-songwriter. It is a work that he wrote and published in 1995, in which Santigo Feliú and Silvio Rodríguez also worked. Aute is an internationally renowned musician, although he also has other talents and has explored other areas, such as acting, poetry, and film directing.

Treachery