What Article 143 of the Criminal Code punishes
Article 143 governs the set of conducts involving participation in another person's death connected with suicide, and, since the reform introduced by Organic Law 3/2021, euthanasia as well. Its first three paragraphs punish three forms of involvement in another person's suicide: inducing someone to commit suicide (paragraph 1), cooperating with necessary acts towards another person's suicide (paragraph 2), and cooperating to the point of carrying out the death (paragraph 3).
Paragraphs 4 and 5, as worded by Organic Law 3/2021 regulating euthanasia (which reworded paragraph 4 and added paragraph 5), shift the perspective entirely: instead of looking at a third party's suicide, they govern assistance in dying for a person suffering a serious, chronic and disabling condition, or a serious and incurable illness, with constant and unbearable suffering, who requests it in an express, serious and unequivocal manner. Paragraph 4 significantly reduces the penalty for anyone who causes or actively cooperates in that death; paragraph 5 goes further and excludes criminal liability where the conduct complies with the organic law regulating euthanasia.
Penalty
Inducing suicide carries four to eight years' imprisonment; cooperating with necessary acts carries two to five years' imprisonment; and if the cooperation extends to physically carrying out the death, six to ten years' imprisonment. Paragraph 4 reduces the penalty for these last two brackets by one or two degrees where the death is caused, or cooperated in, at the express request of someone suffering a serious and incurable condition as described. Paragraph 5 imposes no penalty at all: it states that anyone acting in compliance with the euthanasia law incurs no criminal liability.
Relationship with Article 143 bis and lawful assistance in dying
The provision sits alongside Article 143 bis, which punishes with one to four years' imprisonment the public online dissemination of content designed to promote suicide among minors or people with a disability in need of special protection: a stand-alone offence aimed at viral-challenge phenomena, unrelated to the direct personal relationship required by Article 143. Applying paragraph 5 also requires assistance in dying to follow the procedure of the euthanasia law; anyone who departs from that path remains liable under paragraphs 2 to 4.
Defence strategy
The defence starts by pinpointing which paragraph applies according to the real degree of involvement in the death: inducing is not the same as cooperating, nor cooperating the same as physically carrying it out. In cases linked to euthanasia, it is decisive to establish that the required medical preconditions were met — a serious, chronic and disabling condition, or a serious and incurable illness, with constant and unbearable suffering — and that the request was express, serious and unequivocal, as well as checking whether the legal procedure was followed, since that determines whether paragraph 4's reduction or paragraph 5's exemption applies.