Prof. Włodzimierz Wróbel’s[1] position of 12 March 2021

regarding the Judge Igor Tuleya being brought in by force

The Internal Affairs Department of the National Public Prosecutor’s Office has applied to the Supreme Court for permission to bring him (Judge Tuleya) in by force (according to onet.pl).

The Criminal Procedures Code does not address anything such as “bringing someone in by force” so this was probably about “detention and bringing in by force” from Article 247, para. 1 of the Criminal Procedures Code.

In the judge’s case, there is no court decision for holding him criminally liable (which is required by Article 181 of the Polish Constitution), because it was only the Disciplinary Chamber that issued the relevant consent.

Regardless of this, it should be stated that, according to the Act on the Supreme Court, this Chamber does not have the power to grant consent to detain a judge (bring him in by force). Article 27 of this Act stipulates that “The jurisdiction of the Disciplinary Chamber includes cases (…) 1a) regarding permission to prosecute or temporarily arrest judges”. Detention (bringing in by force) is not a temporary arrest.

Therefore, if this Internal Affairs Department of the National Public Prosecutor’s Office files an appropriate request to the Supreme Court, the case would need to be transferred to the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court, whose jurisdiction encompasses “cases examined under the Criminal Procedures Code of 6 June 1997” – Article 24 of the Act on the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, the matter of detention in a criminal case is regulated precisely by the provisions of this Code.

Link to the original publication in Polish:

https://m.facebook.com/100001719800912/posts/4056899824377304/?d=n

[1] The author is a judge of the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court (since 2011), professor of the Jagiellonian University, chairman of the Department of Criminal Law of the Jagiellonian University, Head of the Chair of Bioetics and Medical  Law of the Jagiellonian University. In 2013–2016, he was the deputy chairman of the Criminal Law Codification Committee at the Ministry of Justice. On 23 May 2020, he was one of the five candidates of the Supreme Court’s General Assembly for the position of the First President of the Supreme Court, obtaining the highest support among the judges participating in the General Assembly of the Supreme Court judges (50 votes out of 95).