Crime of injury

This section includes a series of conducts whose main characteristic is that they directly affect the bodily integrity or health, physical or mental, of persons. These conducts are considered as criminal acts, whether or not they require medical or surgical treatment. The protected legal right is, therefore, the bodily integrity and physical or mental health of the unborn child (injuries to the fetus are expressly criminalized in the following Title IV, in articles 157 and 158).

These offenses are found in Book II, Title III, Articles 147 to 156 quinquies.

The basic type of the crime of injury is provided for in the first article 147:

Whoever, by any means or procedure, causes an injury to another that undermines his bodily integrity or his physical or mental health, shall be punished, as a defendant of the crime of injury, with a prison sentence of three months to three years or a fine of six to twelve months, provided that the injury objectively requires medical or surgical treatment for its healing, in addition to an initial medical assistance. The simple surveillance or medical follow-up of the course of the injury shall not be considered medical treatment.

• Whoever, by any means or procedure, causes an injury to another person not included in the preceding paragraph, shall be punished with a fine of one to three months.
• Whoever hits or mistreats another person without causing injury, shall be punished with a fine of one to two months.
• The offenses provided for in the two preceding paragraphs may only be prosecuted by means of a complaint by the aggrieved person or his legal representative.

This is a crime in which legal assistance is essential from the outset, to ensure the parallel intervention of a doctor who examines the affected person, since the existence of an expert report and its ratification in court will be the one that will prove the seriousness of the injuries and, where appropriate, the sequelae, and consequently, the determination of the penalty and the civil liability to be established as compensation.