What for and why it is so stupid ?
Radoslaw Baszuk (comment – in Polish – on the blog of the author who is a defence council of judge Alina Czubieniak in her disciplinary proceedings, 16 March 2020)
In the sheer volume of more or less important information that reaches us and which we need to process every day, we probably missed one. The National Council of the Judiciary gave up its attempts to maintain its presence in the European Network of Councils for the Judiciary. In statement of March 12, it stated that „it was no longer interested in becoming a member of the ENCJ.” It is hardly surprising. In a situation where we know that in a moment the host throws us out of the club in which we could not behave properly, it is better to go out alone, calling out that we did not like membership anyway.
Unnecessarily, however, the National Council of the Judiciary deemed it necessary to recall on this occasion some of its already known „golden thoughts”. One of them is: „public speaking against legal amendments does not constitute a disciplinary offense, which does not exclude the possibility of conducting disciplinary proceedings against such judges due to other allegations, including the dissemination of obvious lies”.
So, if we talk about the dissemination of obvious lies …
In the position we can read: „The competence of the National Council of the Judiciary also includes the possibility of appealing against a disciplinary decision issued in the first instance – in the current term, the Council has exercised this right in the case of judge Alina Czubieniak (reference number KRS-WP-7000-57 / 1-19 ) by appealing in her favour (resolution No. 483/2019 of 10 May 2019), and also demanding her acquittal. „
How was it actually?
The case of Judge Alina Czubieniak concerned her issuing in the second instance a decision revoking detention on remand and sending the case back for re-examination. The judge made this decision when a mentally handicapped person who could not write and read was not granted access to a lawyer before and during the interrogations prior to detention. For this she was punished by the Disciplinary Chamber for disciplinary offense – an obvious and blatant offense against the law.
In the resolution of 10 May 2019 it was written: „The National Council of the Judiciary lodges an appeal against the judgment (…) and requests that the proceedings be discontinued pursuant to art. 17 para. 1 point 3 of the Act of 6 June 1997. – The Code of Criminal Procedure due to the negligible social harmfulness of the disciplinary tort assigned to the accused. ” Such an allegation was also made in the appeal. The National Council of the Judiciary (KRS) accused the Disciplinary Chamber’s judgment of „an error in the factual findings adopted as the basis for the judgment, consisting in erroneous determination that the accused’s behaviour described in the judgment is characterized by a higher than negligible degree of social harmfulness, which had an impact on the content of the judgment under appeal, as it resulted in the imposition of a disciplinary penalty of warning.”
There is no doubt as to the reasoning of the appeal. „As a rule, the National Council of the Judiciary does not question the findings of the Supreme Court regarding its issuance. Thus, the Council does not deny that in the present case the accused committed a disciplinary offense consisting in unjustified revocation of the decision of the district court on the application of detention on remand.
The accused judge and her defence counsel, not the National Council of the Judiciary, demanded acquittal of disciplinary charge. The Council representative did not appear at the appeal hearing, so he had no opportunity to change the appeal contained in the appeal.
So why the statement to the ENCJ about „demanding acquittal”? It can of course be maliciously assumed that the members of the National Council of the Judiciary do not see the difference between acquittal and discontinuation of proceedings due to the negligible social harm of the act. Closer to the truth, it seems that they probably have this knowledge, therefore, that it is an ordinary, though incompetent lie. What for? And why so stupid?
Link to the original publication in Polish: https://radekbaszuk.pl/po-co-i-dlaczego-tak-glupio