'Multiplicity of criminal offences' in document 'Portugal - Penal Code'

Jump to:

RELEVANT SECTIONS OF THE IMPLEMENTING LEGISLATION

BOOK I-GENERAL PART

TITLE II-THE ACT

CHAPTER II-FORMS OF CRIME

Article 30
Concurrence of crimes and continuous crime
1. The number of crimes is determined b
y the number of types of crime really committed, or by the number of times that the some type of crime is fulfilled by the agent’s conduct.

2. The multiple accomplishment of the same type of crime or of several types of crime that fundamentally protect the same juridical asset constitutes only one continuous crime, when performed in an essentially homogeneous way and under the solicitation of a same external situation that considerably diminishes the agent’s culpability.

BOOK I
GENERAL PART

TITLE III
JURIDICAL CONSEQUENCES OF THE ACT

CHAPTER IV
CHOICE AND DETERMINATION OF PENALTIES

SECTION III
PUNISHMENT OF CONCURRENT CRIMES AND OF CONTINUOUS CRIME

Article 77
Concurrence punishment rules

1- When someone has perpetrated several crimes before the sentence for any of them has become definite, he will be sentenced to a single penalty. For determination of the penalty, the acts and the personality of the agent will be jointly considered.

2- The applicable penalty has the sum of the penalties concretely applied to the various crimes as maximum limit, without exceeding 25 years in case of imprisonment and 900 days in case of fine; and as minimum limit the higher of the penalties concretely applied to the various crimes.

3- If the penalties applied to the concurrent crimes are some of imprisonment and some of fine, their different nature will be kept in the single penalty resulting from the application of the criteria settled in previous numbers.

4- Accessory penalties and security measures are always applied to the agent, even if prescribed by only one of the applicable rules.


Article 78
Supervenient knowledge of the concurrence

1- If, after a definite judgment, but before the respective penalty is fulfiled, ceased by prescription or extinct, it is known that the agent had perpetrated, before that judgment, another or other crimes, the rules of the previous article are applicable.

2- The stated in the above number is also applicable in case all the crimes had been separately object of definite judgments.

3- Accessory penalties and security measures applied by the previous judgment are kept, except when it is shown unnecessary in face of the new decision; if they are applicable only to the crime that is to be appreciated, they will only be decreed if they are still necessary in face of the previous decision.