Examining the impact of fatal errors and mistakes on the type of person and personality in the degree of penalty and crime in intentional homicide

Before the approval of the Islamic Penal Code in 1991, the judicial procedure regarding unintentional homicide indicated that mistakes had no effect, and there was almost consensus on this matter. However, after the approval of this code and the allocation of Article 206 to intentional homicide, some argued that the term "specific intent" added to achieve intentional homicide referred to the determination of identity. In other words, the murderer could only be punished if they intended to kill a specific individual and that person is the same one who they killed. Therefore, if someone mistakenly kills a person other than their intended target, the murder will no longer be considered intentional and will not be subject to retribution. As a result, a mistake in identifying the victim of an intentional homicide may effectively reduce the charge to unintentional homicide. Some others interpret the term "specific intent" as physical identification and believe that even if the murderer mistakenly identifies the victim and kills the wrong person, the act would still be considered intentional murder because the murderer pointed towards and targeted the actual victim.

However, there is no specific judicial procedure created for this matter and only one insistent verdict has been issued, which considers the actual murder as quasi-intentional and this statement has been strengthened in the present study. Regarding the mistake in target, with the approval of Article 296 of the Islamic Penal Code, which had no legislative history before, a disagreement arose over the effect of this type of mistake on intentional homicide. Some believe that a mistake in target turns the murder into pure accidental killing and refer to Article 296 in this regard. This article stipulates that even if someone intends to shoot at a person, object, or animal, and their arrow hits an innocent person, their action is considered purely accidental. Others consider this article to apply only to cases where the perpetrator was performing a legitimate task.