Commentary: Czech trial of police president shows state attorney not independent

The recent trial of Czech Police President Petr Lessy unfortunately has once again demonstrated the inability of the state attorney to proceed independently. I personally consider Lessy to be incompetent and to bear his share of the blame for the very poor reputation of the police, who constantly face criticism from human rights activists; despite this, I cannot agree with his being convicted without evidence.

Before 1989 it was considered a matter of course that the public prosecutors, including the military ones (who handled criminal activity committed by members of the army and police, or the State Security Services at that time) would proceed in the vast majority of cases as the governing elite desired. The communist police, prosecutor and courts often comprised a single unit.

That is common in every totalitarian system. It doesn’t matter its focus, whether ultra-left or ultra-right (like Nazi Germany and the Fascist regime in Chile) or whether it is an authoritarian or totalitarian regime where the entire running of the state is determined by a religious group (a classic example of which is Iran).

In a democratic state based on human rights and the values of humanism, however, the work of a state attorney looks rather different. Prosecutors do not succumb to pressure from above, and they do perform their work according to their own best conscience.

In the Czech Republic, however, the situation is somewhat different. Many cases have shown us that the state attorneys do what the Inspector-General of the Security Corps (Generální inspekce bezpečnostních sborů – GIBS) or the police order them to do, even though it might mean that the victims of their behavior get justice before a court only sometimes (the GIBS is the successor of the previously notorious Interior Minister’s Inspectorate, which earned its reputation by sweeping various scandals under the carpet and was constantly criticized for the fact that police officers were investigating other police officers, a significant problem, especially in cases of police brutality or unauthorized shootings).

If the overseeing state attorney in this country issues a decision to approve the shelving of a case that is being handled by the GIBS or police, it is essentially almost impossible to have that decision officially overturned. The decision per se cannot be contested; all that can be contested is whether the state attorney properly followed the procedure established by law (i.e., the formal side of the matter, not the merits of the case).  

Understandably, this is all a bit more complicated in practice than I am describing, but overall the chances of overturning a decision by the state attorney to shelve a case are almost non-existent. When we consider that the state attorneys always stick together, we can see why people often have nowhere to appeal to for justice.   

All it takes is to recall the case of the Romani man who "fell" from the window of a police station and whose family had to go all the way to the European Court for Human Rights for recognition of their complaint that the police investigation of his death had been poorly handled. Unfortunately, in this state of ours, many homeless people have also suffered violent deaths for which the culprits have not always been found.

It’s not hard to figure out whom such people most often come into conflict with (local and state police, right-wing extremists, security guards) and who, therefore, might be behind their violent deaths, as well as whether there has always really been the will to find the culprits. These victims, however, had no one to look into the investigation files on their behalf to discover whether there were any missteps.

Unfortunately, sometimes in cases where the case of the death of a homeless person has, through various coincidences, made it before a court, the prosecution has failed because of the court’s own procedures. This happened, for example, in a case where police officers from Pelhřimov drove a homeless man beyond the town limits and left him outside in winter to freeze to death without aid.   

The case made it to the court only thanks to the police officers’ superior, who refused to cover it up and handed the evidence over to the state attorney. I have deep personal respect for that commander. 

However, those officers unfortunately were never punished by the court for what they did. Another such case was that of detective Daniel Grofek, who beat someone to death in a terrible way; that case made it to trial only thanks to the testimonies of several witnesses, but the detective was merely put on parole.

Let’s return to the Lessy case. State attorney Michal Muravský first accommodated the GIBS by charging Lessy with felony defamation. 

The court, fortunately, decided to review whether Muravský had any reliable evidence and then acquitted Lessy (since he did not). Muravský has figured in many scandals, such as the shooting case on Strakonická Street in Prague during which a young woman lost her life at the hands of officers from Prague’s Emergency Vehicle Unit, and the behavior of the state attorney in that case was, in my view, more than strange (I believe there was not a single piece of evidence submitted to prove the woman was not visible in her car at the time of the shooting, while all the evidence that did exist, including eyewitness testimony, testified to the opposite).

The behavior of state attorney Lenka Bradáčová in the case of the Romani man shot to death in Tavald in 2012 was similarly strange, and many questions about that incident remain open to this day. The problem with many state attorneys is that they probably value property more than human life.      

I am a democratic, left-wing person, and it is completely unacceptable to me that people who are in need are being treated cruelly in this country, to say nothing of being slaughtered with impunity. Unfortunately, thanks to the wrong people ending up in the wrong places, this does happen. 

There may be one comfort for us, however. I do believe another justice exists besides the one here on earth, and fortunately, no police inspectorates or tricky state prosecutors have any influence there.