Aberratio ictus - Anstiftarens ansvar vid den anstiftade gärningsmannens error in persona

Sammanfattning: The phenomenon known as aberratio ictus has long been a point of discussion in criminal law. A commonly used illustration of the phenomenon is when person A tries to murder person B, but accidentally deprives the life of person C. The question that arises from this scenario is how to judge A’s responsibility? As of writing this, there is no case law from the Supreme Court regarding how to solve this issue. Furthermore, the legal doctrine does not present a unanimous solution to this problem. On one hand, there are those who advocate the method called “specialitetsmodellen.” This method states that the perpetrator should be held responsible in accordance with their specific intent. As a result, A would be convicted of attempted murder in relation to B and negligent homicide regarding C. On the other hand, there are those who champion the method called “ekvivalensmodellen.” According to this method, the perpetrator’s specific intent is not of importance. What is important is that their intent is in correlation with the prerequisites of the offence, which are written in general terms. Applied on the mentioned illustration, A would be convicted of the murder of C. The reason for this being is that both B and C, based on the perspective of the criminal law, are equal objects. Recently, the interest in aberratio ictus has been renewed due to a recent case by the Court of Appeal. An individual was convicted of incitement to murder, even though the perpetrators, who had been incited, had accidentally killed the wrong person. While the district court deemed the situation to be a case of aberratio ictus, the Court of Appeal did not. Since then, the Supreme Court has granted the certiorari on how the instigator’s responsibility should be judged. The purpose of this thesis is to conclude which method should be used to solve cases of aberratio ictus, and if the case of the instigator should be treated as such. An analysis of existing law leads to the conclusions that “specialitetsmodellen” is preferable over “ekvivalensmodellen,” and that the case of the instigator should be treated as a case of aberratio ictus. Consequently, the accused should not be convicted of incitement to murder.