Czech court reduces sentence for assailant of wheelchair user on appeal, acquits relative

Marek Polhoš (age 18) of Ostrava, who last October attacked Lukáš Král, a candidate for the ANO party and a wheelchair user at a tram stop in Ostrava-Zábřeh, robbing him of his mobile telephone, will serve five years in prison for his crime. The verdict was announced on Friday 13 March by the appeals tribunal of the Regional Court in Ostrava.

The verdict was handed down in response to an appeal filed by the defendant, who had originally been sentenced to six years in prison by the District Court in Ostrava. "It is primarily necessary to state that the defendant committed this criminal activity out of greed, in a brutal way, exploiting another person’s defenselessness," the appeals court ruled, according to the Bruntál and Krnov daily paper, adding that Polhoš had also committed the robbery while on probation for previous offenses.

The same court also originally sentenced the defendant’s mother to three and a half years in prison for aiding and abetting Polhoš, who placed the stolen telephone in her pocket after committing the crime. The appeals court acquitted her on Friday, finding her guilty not of aiding and abetting but of being partial to her son, which between relatives is not considered a felony.  

The case attracted a great deal of media attention prior to last year’s local elections. Král, who ran in fifth place on the ANO movement’s candidate list in Ostrava, evidently wanted to exploit the fact that the assailant was Romani in his campaign.  

Král reported on the attack on his Facebook profile, which sparked a wave of anti-Romani commentaries. News server iDNES.cz reported that "His solo marketing action got out of control and slowly turned into an anti-Romani campaign."