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Analysis: Czech verdict means it's a crime to stop an armed brawl

01 April 2014
10 minute read

Last month the Regional Court in Ústí nad Labem handed down its first-instance verdict in the case of the violent death of Mr Ivan J. In May 2013, Mr J. was stabbed twice during the celebrations of the opening of the spa season in the Czech town of Teplice and succumbed to his wounds shortly thereafter.  

Other people suffered from lacerations and stabbing during the same incident. News server Romea.cz is the only media outlet in the Czech Republic to have reported on this case extensively (in our articles of 17 January, 21 January, and 6 February this year); the article you are now reading has been written without access to the case files and is based on my subjective impressions of the trial.

The court sentenced defendant Stanislav S. to five years in prison for participating in an affray resulting in death. The news reporting by other media outlets about the announcement of this verdict has been brief, contenting itself with quoting the court and the participants in the proceedings, and has not provided readers with any commentary, details, or investigative reporting.

That is not surprising, as journalists attended only the beginning and end of the trial. They completely missed hearing the standpoint of the victims, as well as key testimony by medical experts. 

While this trial was underway, the media were instead intensively following a different case being tried at the very same court, that of the violent nighttime conflict between members of the majority society and members of a particular ethnic minority in the town of Duchcov. Of course, the consequences of that incident were nowhere near as drastic as that of the death in Teplice.

Rarely have the perspectives of various law enforcement officials been so diametrically divergent as they have been in the Teplice case. In the beginning, police charged the suspect with third-degree murder, but without racial motivation – that charge would have opened up the possibility of extraordinary sentencing.

According to the indictment brought by the detectives in Ústí, Stanislav S. attempted murder three times and was successful once. The Regional State Prosecutor then reclassified the case as one count of grievous bodily harm resuting in death and two counts of GBH not resulting in death, all of which had been committed because of the ethnic origins of the victims.

The entire conflict was sparked by Stanislav S.’s friend, Kamil S., who called Stanislav and asked him to help him "explain something to a group of Gypsies" who had allegedly physically assaulted him. Kamil S. was never charged for his role in the incident and has figured in the case only as a witness.

On that fateful night, Stanislav S. was sitting with his father and his girlfriend in a restaurant in Teplice, calmly having a drink. All it took was one message from Kamil S. about an alleged attack by Romani people and Stanislav S. was up and running out the door despite the pleas of his family members.

Stanislav found Kamil, who was working as a security guard at a stand, and together they ran off after a group of Romani people who were out for a walk through the town. They took off after these people despite the fact that when Stanislav saw Kamil, he didn’t notice any injuries on him.

It was on the basis of these facts that the state prosecutor filed her charges of racial motivation and asked the court for a sentence on the lower end of the scale, i.e., 10 – 12 years in prison. In its verdict, however, the Regional Court reclassified the crime, now calling it an affray resulting in death.

The court has sentenced the defendant to serve half of the maximum punishment allowable (i.e., to serve five years in prison) and has also called on the state prosecutor to initiate criminal prosecutions of those who until now have been considered victims. The court believes these people also committed the felony crime of participating in an affray, but without any fatal consequences.

The judge did not say what the position would be of Kamil S., who pulled his friend into this conflict that ended in death, in any future proceedings. The court believes the defendant’s motivation was to protect the health and life of his friend.

That motivation is why Stanislav S. joined Kamil S. in running off to take on six men who, at the time they found them, showed no signs of violent behavior. The two men must have counted on their opponents resisting, but they went into the affray nonetheless. 

What does that mean? Apparently, that the victims are to blame for their own injuries.

According to the court, the question of who struck whom during the subsequent skirmish, and in what order, was never clarified. The testimonies of almost everyone participating in the bloody scuffle are more or less different.  

The only thing that is clear is that only one person did any stabbing: The defendant. The Romani participants in the conflict, unlike the "whites", willingly described to the court in detail how they had attacked their opponents with the aim of disarming their dangerous assailant, but the judge did not believe them.  

The judge insists that all of those participating in the fight wanted to be there and that they have all committed a felony. Prior to the incident, four of the Romani men ultimately involved already had criminal records, one for a minor violent crime and one for making criminal threats.

On that fateful day, one of the men with a record decided to stand up for his friend, Ivan J. The deceased had his own criminal record and had been a violent thug who had gotten into many fights years ago, one of which had also resulted in death.

The two other men who were harmed by Stanislav S.’s knife had their own rich criminal records. However, the defendant insisted that at the time of the incident they were total strangers to him.

After committing his crime, the defendant made an extensive confession at the police department, most of which he later retracted. According to his girlfriend, who allegedly spent the whole day with him, Stanislav S. was not only under the influence of alcohol at the time of the crime, but also under the influence of narcotics (the police never confirmed this).

An eyewitness described to the court that Stanislav S. had behaved precisely as if he were high and intoxicated during the violent conflict. What if the defendant had only intended to trot out his knife under the impression that everyone would quickly run away and steer clear of him in the future?   

For the time being the written version of the verdict has not yet been released. I therefore must base my analysis on the oral justification of the verdict given by the judge, which prompts the following still-unanswered questions: 

According to medical experts, Stanislav S. suffered a total of four "minor injuries" as result of the incident, while his opponents suffered a minimum of five stab wounds and a dozen lacerations. The medical expert told the court that the defendant’s injuries were not consistent with a systematic attack, unlike those of the victims, adding that Ivan J. was stabbed directly in the heart at a moment when he and his assailant were standing upright. 

What was the motivation for stabbing Ivan J. in the left part of his chest? The defendant was the only participant in the conflict to even use a knife; while one of his opponents did have a pocket knife on him, he never used it, not even after suffering two stab wounds to his back.

Instead, according to his own testimony, this particular opponent jumped on the head of the prone Stanislav S., who had just stabbed Ivan J. Even though such behavior is definitely not a display of love, isn’t in understandable in context?

Why didn’t police simply shelve the case? After all, if they had all wanted to fight each other, then all that happened is that one willing participant suffered the consequences.

A police detective who by pure accident happened to witness the final phase of the physical conflict told the court that he had initially been under the impression that the Romani men were attacking the "whites" before realizing he was mistaken. He provided first aid to Ivan J. with five other Romani men all around him – why would he do that if, as the court believes, they were behaving like aggressive brawlers?

The judge based his verdict on testimony by persons whose presence, either supposedly at the scene of the crime or in its vicinity, went unnoticed by this eyewitness (an experienced detective). If the police detective is a reliable witness, then how is it possible that the other persons who testified actually heard or saw anything, given that he never even saw them there? 

For the judge, there was just one reliable testimony about the beginning of the physical conflict. That particular witness testified that when two men, loudly declaiming racist curses, approached his group from behind, he turned to face Stanislav S. and told him "We don’t want any problems" in order to calm him down.

In response, Stanislav S. pulled his knife and swiped at the witness’s chest. If the witness hadn’t jumped out of the way, he might have suffered serious injury.

It was only after that first attempt at grievous bodily harm that the Romani men began their efforts to actively disarm Stanislav S., who had just attacked their friend. Does the verdict therefore mean that when a person with a knife is running around town attacking defenseless people, it is not possible for one to risk one’s own life to stand up to such aggression – does the law require one to run away and leave the others behind?

The verdict ultimately has a positive side to it as well. During his justification, the judge expressly declared that on the basis of the proven evidence, the media’s initial version of events (that what sparked the conflict was a stolen sausage) had been completely ruled out. 

The judge believes that no such theft took place. That, however, did not prevent the reporters from one commercial television station from becoming the only media after the announcement of the verdict to report that "He killed the thief who stole his sausage", and it must be pointed out that the author of that report usually distorts the facts, especially when a case has to do with Romani people.

The judge’s verdict gave a little something to each party involved. The state prosecutor and the victims received a guilty verdict for the defendant, the relatives of the deceased were awarded at least part of the financial compensation they sought, the defendant was sentenced for participating in an affray and got a light sentence (he had faced much harsher punishment from the start), and even the victims of his violent spree are now to be criminally prosecuted. 

However, the judge gave the most to the defendant’s attorney, taking up his legal arguments all but entirely – and ultimately, the judge gave something to the public, too, by insisting that everyone involved in this incident is guilty. Of course, the defendant and his attorney disagree with this verdict.

Stanislav S. has now told the press that he feels completely innocent. This despite the fact that while at the beginning of the trial he claimed that the Romani victims had probably caused their own lacerations and stab wounds, by its end he was apologizing to all of the victims. 

If the state prosecutor appeals the verdict, the defendant will continue to be considered innocent until proven guilty, and the Superior Court in Prague will have to review the entire case. The court should take into consideration the behavior of the various participants in the conflict, which varies significantly and which may be able to explain some things.

The possibility remains that the Superior Court will decide to return the case to the Regional Court in Ústí nad Labem with the instruction that it is to be handled as a murder case – or with the instruction that the defendant is to be acquitted. The case remains open.

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