The drunk driver tried to leave the yard onto a public road, but hit the fence of a neighboring property. He was sentenced to a suspended prison sentence for “driving a car in land traffic while under the influence of alcohol”. A breathalyzer test showed that he had more than three permille. “The convict did not drive a motor vehicle in land traffic,” said the Office of the Commissioner for Human Rights, which requested the cassation of the judgment. It was pointed out that it was decided “in gross violation of procedural law”.
The district court found the defendant guilty in 2022 due to the fact that in 2021 he drove a car in land traffic while under the influence of alcohol. The test showed 1.48 mg/l of alcohol in the exhaled air, i.e. over 3 per mille. The court sentenced him to an eight-month suspended prison sentence and banned him from driving motor vehicles on land for three years. Despite an appeal by the defendant's lawyer, last year the district court in the second instance upheld the verdict.
On Friday, a message was published on the website of the Office of the Human Rights Ombudsman informing about a cassation appeal in this case. “The Road Traffic Law does not apply to traffic in the backyards of private houses, because the place where general or local vehicle traffic takes place should be understood only as roads, i.e. separated strips of land adapted for communication connecting individual towns or local points” – transferred.
Residential buildings with yards (illustrative photo)Illustrative photo/Shutterstock
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He tried to leave the yard, but hit the neighbor's fence
As noted in the press release from the Office of the Commissioner for Human Rights, the district court's judgment was issued “in flagrant violation of procedural law.”
“The evidence shows that, while under the influence of alcohol, the convicted person drove his car, but only in the yard at the back of a private property. He tried to leave the yard onto a public road, but he hit the fence of a neighboring property. Then the police were called and the driver he stopped driving and did not go beyond the yard,” it was described.
This course of events is confirmed, among others, by: a note from the policemen and the testimony of one of them, as well as a protocol of the trial experiment, which shows that the place where the vehicle traffic took place was “the yard at the back of the building”.
According to the Penal Code, “whoever, while in a state of intoxication or under the influence of a narcotic drug, drives a motor vehicle in land, water or air traffic, shall be subject to the penalty of imprisonment for up to 3 years.”
“The court ignores or fails to notice obvious and indisputable shortcomings”
The press release from the Office of the Commissioner for Human Rights recalled that although the concept of land traffic has no legal definition, “there has been a line of case law on this subject that allows for its interpretation.” “As is clear from the Supreme Court's case law, these are areas that must be publicly available and used by an unlimited number of people,” we read further.
“The court of second instance did not properly review the judgment because it did not notice these shortcomings of the District Court. A properly conducted appeal review, going beyond the limits of the appeal, could lead to the finding that the convicted person did not move in the area where land traffic took place, and therefore Therefore, the verdict would be different,” the release noted.
The Office of the Commissioner for Human Rights concluded that, as a consequence, the second instance judgment should be considered “grossly unfair”. “This occurs when the court ignores or does not notice obvious and indisputable shortcomings affecting the correctness of the judgment,” it was explained.
Therefore, in a cassation appeal filed to the Supreme Court, the deputy Ombudsman, Stanisław Trociuk, applied for the annulment of the final judgment and the case to be returned to the district court for reconsideration in the second instance.
Main photo source: Illustrative photo/Shutterstock