The crime of bigamy refers to the act of a person marrying another person or cohabiting with another person in the name of husband and wife when he is already married to another person. The crime of bigamy is regarded as a crime in China's criminal law and belongs to the crime in the field of marriage and family. According to article 258 of the Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China, anyone who commits the crime of bigamy will be punished by law. Depending on the circumstances, the offender may be sentenced to criminal detention, imprisonment or life imprisonment, and may be fined. So what are the criteria for conviction for the specific crime of bigamy? Let's take a look.
The criterion for conviction of the crime of bigamy mainly includes four aspects: the object element, the objective element, the subject element and the subjective element. Specifically:
1) Object element: The object of the crime of bigamy is monogamous marriage. Monogamy is a principle stipulated in the Marriage Law, and bigamy undermines the socialist marriage and family system and must be criminally punished.
2) Objective elements: The crime of bigamy is objectively manifested in the fact that the perpetrator must have bigamy. That is, if a person who has a spouse marries another person, or marries another person knowing that he has a spouse, he commits the crime of bigamy. The term "marriage" here includes a marriage in which a marriage has been registered by law by fraud, and a de facto marriage in which a husband and wife have not been registered.
3) Subject elements: The subject of the crime of bigamy is a general subject, first, a person who has a spouse and establishes a marriage relationship with another person during the existence of the marital relationship; The second is a person who does not have a spouse and marries the other party knowing that the other party has a spouse.
4) Subjective element: The crime of bigamy is manifested in the subjective aspect as direct intent, that is, knowing that another person has a spouse and marrying him or intentionally marrying another person while knowing that he has a spouse. If one of the spouses is married or living together as husband and wife without knowing that the other spouse has a spouse, the non-spouse spouse does not commit the offence of bigamy, and the spouse commits the offence of bigamy.
I would like to remind you here that the determination of the crime of bigamy requires comprehensive consideration of the above four elements, and cannot be based on evidence from a certain aspect alone. At the same time, in judicial practice, it is also necessary to make a comprehensive judgment based on the circumstances of the specific case, such as the relationship between the parties, marital status, behavior and other factors. In addition, the penalty for the crime of bigamy is generally punishable by imprisonment for up to two years or criminal detention under the provisions of the Criminal Code.