Giżycko. She attacked the saleswoman with a meat tenderizer. The defense lawyer wanted to prove that it was not a dangerous tool

The robbery at a grocery and monopoly store in Giżycko took place almost a year ago. According to the local police at the time, the young woman started a conversation with the saleswoman, then took a meat tenderizer from her purse and hit the 56-year-old woman in the head. Then she hit her all over her body.

There was a struggle and the attacked woman fled the store. Then the attacker went behind the counter and took at least PLN 800 from the store cash register.

The police arrested her a few hours later. She was charged with robbery using a dangerous weapon and bodily harm to the attacked woman. She was also accused of a second crime – theft of a watch worth one and a half thousand zlotys.

The court of first instance sentenced the 30-year-old to four and a half years in prison. The woman also had to pay the saleswoman PLN 15,000 in compensation (she suffered serious head and hand injuries).

The defense attorney appealed against the verdict. He wanted recognition that a meat tenderizer was not a dangerous tool. And therefore – changes in the legal classification of the act. He proposed a milder penalty – two years and two months in prison.

He argued that a wooden kitchen meat tenderizer “does not have the characteristics of another, similarly dangerous object.” This is a provision in the Penal Code regarding robbery with the use of a dangerous weapon, which mentions a firearm, a knife or “another similarly dangerous object”.

– The assumption that the use of an object determines whether it is dangerous or not raises the risk that this group of objects would be indefinite. Because it could just as easily be assumed that an ordinary stick or stick could be a dangerous object if it were used as in this case – argued defense lawyer Wojciech Butrym in his final speech.

The prosecutor's office wanted the appeal dismissed. Prosecutor Weronika Rybnik pointed out that the pestle had metal fittings.

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– Taking into account the features of a meat tenderizer, but also its normal, everyday use (…) there should be no doubt that it is another, dangerous item. We use it to break down meat that we can't break down with other objects, she said.

She emphasized that this already proves that it is a dangerous item used other than for its intended purpose.

The accused was brought to the trial, she cried, apologized and asked for a lighter sentence. – I am very ashamed of what I did and I regret it very much – she said in her last words.

However, the Court of Appeal in Białystok upheld the first instance judgment. Judge Jerzy Szczurewski, justifying this ruling, said that the crime was planned and carried out with full premeditation, the blows were inflicted with great force in places that were sensitive to human life.

The court emphasized that the meat tenderizer used in this way is “undoubtedly” a dangerous tool. He appealed, among others: to the expert opinion.

As Judge Szczurewski said, the decisive issue was that the pestle had metal fittings and, when used in the way the 30-year-old woman did during the attack, it was a dangerous tool from the first blow, and there were many blows.

Referring to the sentence, the appellate court found no grounds to mitigate it. – The only mitigating element that could be so appreciated by us were the tears shed in the courtroom today. But there were no such tears after the blows were struck, after the money was taken (…). There was no remorse after the action, the judge explained.

He added that although the woman confessed, the circumstances of the attack were already known from the surveillance footage. The judgment is final.