What is the difference between robbery and theft?
Theft is the crime in which someone appropriates something from another by using violence or intimidation on people or force on things (like breaking a window). If the appropriation of something from another is done without violence, intimidation or force in things, it is theft.
What is the penalty for the most serious assaults?
Robbery with intimidation is what is known as assault, in which a person or group of people threatens another people or a group of them or directly assaults one or more people to give them things or money, etc.
The person guilty of robbery with violence or intimidation in people, whether the violence or intimidation takes place before the robbery to facilitate its execution, in the act of committing it or after it is committed to favor their impunity, will be punished with variable penalties, depending on the magnitude of the damage produced.
The most serious cases are robbery with homicide and robbery with rape. The legal amendment of July 2016 raised the penalties, which range from maximum prison in the highest degree to qualified perpetual prison. That is, the penalty ranges from 15 years and one day in jail to qualified life imprisonment. If this last sanction is applied, the condemned person will not be able to aspire to conditional freedom before serving 40 effective years in prison.
The penalty of greater imprisonment will be applied in its maximum degree to simple perpetual imprisonment when the victim castration occurs together with the robbery; the mutilation of a limb or injuries that leave the victim insane, useless for work, powerless, handicapped by an important or notably deformed limb. The simple life imprisonment penalty differs from qualified perpetual imprisonment in that the convicted person could request his conditional release after 20 years of effective compliance.
If the victims are held under ransom or for a period of time greater than that necessary to commit the crime or if they receive serious injuries, the penalty is 10 years and one day to 20 years in prison.
What are the penalties for the other assaults?
In general, robberies with violence or intimidation of people receive the penalty of major imprisonment in their minimum to maximum degrees, that is, five years and one day to twenty years in prison regardless of the value of the stolen species.
What is surprise robbery?
It is what is known as the “spear.” It occurs when the perpetrator or perpetrators operate by surprise, pretending to fights or performing maneuvers to cause confusion in public places. The penalty is 541 days to five years in prison.
How should judges determine penalties?
For repeat offenders, the minimum degree of penalty will not be applied. For these purposes, recidivism is considered to have been previously convicted of crimes to which the law indicates the same or greater punishment or for a crime of the same kind.
For robberies, thefts, cattle rustling (cattle theft) and reception, it will be considered an aggravating circumstance that the accused has acted as part of a group or organization of two or more people, unless it is an illicit association, in which he has another penalty.
