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Hungarian Court Acquits Two Romani Men after 2100 Days in Prison
Budapest, 1. 8. 2005,
10:45
(ERRC) The Hajd-Bihar County Court has acquitted at
retrial two Romani men previously found guilty of murder. The two men,
originally convicted on the basis of very weak evidence, had been
sentenced
to serve 15 and 13 years imprisonment respectively in 1999.
The facts of the case are as follows:
On 4 March 1999, a man was robbed and murdered in the village of
jszentmargita in northeastern Hungary. On the same evening and sometime
before the incident, Mr. Ferenc Burka Jr. (28) and his father, Mr. Ferenc
Burka Sr. (48), both Romani men, had a few drinks together in a local bar.
On the following day, the two men were arrested and an investigation was
initiated against them. Two witness testimonies were considered sufficient
evidence for an indictment. The first was the bartender's witness
statement, according to which the two Romani men had seen a large amount
of
money in the possession of the victim on that day. The second was the
testimony of a villager who reportedly saw the two Romani men walking in
the direction of the victim's house, where the murder took place.
The investigation produced solely circumstantial evidence. An officer
of f
the local police department even stated during one of the court hearings,
"I immediately thought of Ferenc Burka. It was intuition. I thought he was
probably the perpetrator." During proceedings, the prosecutor stated that
Ferenc Burka Jr. had burnt and buried the boots of his father, "a common
perpetratoral behaviour of Gypsies when they commit a murder and robbery".
However, no buried boots -- destroyed or otherwise -- were actually found.
The prosecutor took as evidence that a pair of boots had been burned and
buried the fact that only one pair of boots was found in the house.
Furthermore, the prosector described as "suspicious" the fact that, at the
time of arrest, the Burkas had washed their clothes and hung them out to
dry. During the investigation, police disregarded the fact that they
discovered a red hair in victim's hand when they found the body and that
the Burkas both have black hair.
On 2 April 2002, having been found guilty, the two men were sentenced
to 15
and 13 years imprisonment. They began serving the sentences on 16 March
1999.
After lawyers engaged by the ERRC -- Dr. Lszl Zeke and Dr. Pter
Margitics -- appealed the decision, the case went to the Szeged Judicial
Court in September 2003. This tribunal quashed the lower court judgment
and
ordered a retrial. In March 2005, in the repeated procedure, the two men
were ordered released from custody but were placed under house arrest.
They
had, by that time, already spent exactly 2100 days in a penitentiary. In
the meantime, other witnesses came forward who testified to their
innocence. Witnesses also fingered another man, Mr. L.T., who reportedly
stated that he was the actual perpetrator and had carried out the deed
because he thought the victim had stolen some construction tools from him.
On 9 July 2005, on the basis of extensive argumentation indicating that
the
Burkas had been wrongly convicted, the Hajd-Bihar County Court acquitted
the two men. The prosecutor has appealed the decision and, therefore, the
judgment is not yet legally binding. The proceedings confirm that racial
animus continues to play a significant role in the Hungarian criminal
justice system.
ERRC |
