Article 15 Federal Criminal Code

The crime is excluded when:

I.- The act is carried out without intervention of the will of the agent;

II.- The non-existence of any of the elements that make up the typical description of the crime in question is proven;

III.- Action is taken with the consent of the holder of the affected legally protected interest, provided that the following requirements are met:

a)That the legally protected interest be disposable;

b)That the holder of the interest have the legal capacity to freely dispose of it; and

c)That the consent be express or tacit and without any defect intervening; or else, that the act be carried out in circumstances that allow reasonably presuming that, had the holder been consulted, he or she would have granted the same;

IV.- A real, actual or imminent, and unlawful aggression is repelled, in protection of one's own or another's legally protected interests, provided that there exists necessity of the defense and rationality of the means employed and there does not intervene sufficient and immediate intentional (with dolo) provocation on the part of the person aggrieved or of the person defended.

It shall be presumed as legitimate defense, unless proven otherwise, the act of causing damage to anyone who by any means tries to penetrate, without right, the home of the agent, that of his family, its appurtenances, or those of any person whom he has the obligation to defend, the place where his own or another's goods are found with respect to which the same obligation exists; or else, finds him in any of those places in circumstances that reveal the probability of an aggression;

V.- Action is taken out of the necessity to safeguard one's own or another's legally protected interest from a real, actual or imminent danger, not caused with intent (dolo) by the agent, injuring another interest of lesser or equal value than the one safeguarded, provided that the danger is not avoidable by other means and the agent does not have the legal duty to face it;

VI.- The action or the omission is carried out in compliance with a legal duty or in exercise of a right, provided that there exists rational necessity of the means employed to comply with the duty or exercise the right, and that the latter is not carried out with the sole purpose of harming another;

VII.- At the moment of carrying out the typical act, the agent does not have the capacity to understand its unlawful character or to conduct himself in accordance with that understanding, by virtue of suffering a mental disorder or retarded intellectual development, unless the agent has provoked his mental disorder with intent (dolo) or with negligence (culpa), in which case he shall be liable for the typical result as long as he has foreseen it or it was foreseeable to him.

When the capacity referred to in the preceding paragraph is only considerably diminished, the provisions of article 69 bis of this Code shall be applied.

VIII.- The action or the omission is carried out under an invincible error;

A)Regarding any of the essential elements that make up the criminal type; or

B)Regarding the unlawfulness of the conduct, whether because the subject is unaware of the existence of the law or of its scope, or because he believes that his conduct is justified.

If the errors referred to in the preceding subparagraphs are vincible, the provisions of article 66 of this Code shall be applied;

IX.- Considering the circumstances that concur in the carrying out of unlawful conduct, a conduct different from the one carried out is not rationally demandable of the agent, by virtue of his not having been able to determine himself to act in accordance with the law; or

X.- The typical result is produced by fortuitous event.