Abstract

This paper deals with the problems of culturally motivated crimes, cultural evidences and cultural defenses. In order to identify a culturally motivated crime, which is the result of a normative conflict, a three-step reasoning is proposed. The first step is needed to look for the subjective motivation as used by the offender, who claims to have acted according to certain cultural norms. The second step refers to the objectification, according to which one can to control whether or not other members of the cultural group of the offender agree with that view and whether or not they estimate the action appropriate in a given situation. The third step implies that the culture of the offender is compared with the norms of the dominant culture. These steps regard the evaluation of evidence. It is a necessary condition for the application of a defense that recognizes the cultural background of the defendant as an excuse or mitigating circumstance in a criminal case.