Judge Piotr Bojarczuk's interference in the court's ruling and the story of Judge Anna Kalbarczyk

Judge Anna Kalbarczyk of the District Court of Warsaw-Praga is a heroine Marta Gordziewicz's report “Closed System”. Her story shows how the interests of the new judges mattered more than the right of citizens to an independent court. Kalbarczyk is the first new judge who, at the end of last year, asked the Minister of Justice Adam Bodnar to withdraw her promotion to the Court of Appeal in Warsaw. This was done and in February this year she returned to adjudicating in the district court.

Judge Kalbarczyk began her efforts to advance to the Warsaw Court of Appeal in 2018, when the National Council of the Judiciary was still unquestionable. However, in the same year, an amendment to the act on the National Council of the Judiciary came into force, introduced by the United Right, which interrupted the term of office of the legal National Council of the Judiciary and appointed a new one. The judges to it were elected by politicians, mainly politicians of the United Right.

Kalbarczyk admits that she had “doubts” about the neo-KRS. “But despite these doubts, I simply wanted to see how this Council would work,” she explains. However, she did not withdraw from the competition and in 2019, the neo-KRS gave her a promotion. A year later, the president Andrzej Duda appointed her to adjudicate at the Court of Appeal in Warsaw. And it was then that she became a new judge.

– My decision was wrong. It was my wrong decision, but I really made it in completely different circumstances – she argues today. She was persuaded to accept the nomination – claims Kalbarczyk – by the so-called old, or legal, SA judges. They knew her legal views, because they had previously ruled with her for three years, when she was delegated to the SA. For them, she was supposed to be a guarantee that she would not walk at the mercy of power.

And it was while Kalbarczyk was ruling in the Court of Appeal in Warsaw, in July 2023, that a single person interfered with the ruling. The court's decision was annulled by the vice-president of the criminal division. It was not about the fate of the accused, but about the composition of the court.

The defendant in the case was Igor Krawetz, a Ukrainian activist who recently acquired Polish citizenship.

In a conversation with “Czarno na biały” he recalls that the charge “concerned insulting the Republic of Poland”. In 2021, Krawetz posted a vulgar entry about Poland on the internet, which was supposed to be a reaction to information from his friends about how the police treated them when they wanted to commemorate a Russian journalist who set herself on fire in protest against Putin's regime. In the first instance, the court dismissed the case, but the prosecutor's office and the ABW appealed.

The appeal in Krawetz's case was to be decided by a three-judge panel. The chairperson was Anna Kalbarczyk, and the panel included Ewa Leszczyńska-Furtak.

Leszczyńska-Furtak is a judge whom the president of the Court of Appeal, Piotr Schab (a new judge and also a judicial disciplinary spokesman), had previously transferred from the criminal division to the labor division. However, Leszczyńska-Furtak was ordered to be reinstated to the criminal division in December 2022. European Court of Human Rights. However, President Schab did not implement the ECtHR ruling.

Instead, the presiding judge of Krawetz's appeal, Anna Kalbarczyk, did so. She reinstated Leszczyńska-Furtak to judge this very case. She did so in the form of a resolution she issued as a court.

– I took it to the secretary's office and left the files. But when I came back, the files were gone. (…) Judge Bojarczuk took them – the judge recalls in a conversation with Gordziewicz.

The vice-chairman of the criminal division, Piotr Bojarczuk, annulled the court's decision on the reinstatement of judge Leszczyńska-Furtak, or rather “deemed it ineffective”. He worked at the Court of Appeal at that time, because he was delegated there by Zbigniew Ziobro from the District Court in Warsaw.

Meanwhile, apart from the appeals or complaints specified by law, no judge has the right to change court decisions – neither verdicts nor rulings. Bojarczuk, however, did it independently and single-handedly – without considering any complaint or appeal.

– The (vice – editor's) chairman of the department does not have the authority to interfere in any area of ​​adjudication at all – emphasizes Kalbarczyk.

The vice-president of the criminal division, who overturned the reinstatement of judge Leszczyńska-Furtak, did not inform either the accused or the defense attorney – attorney Radosław Baszuk. Krawetz and his attorney learned about the vice-president changing the composition of the judges – as they claim – from a reporter from “Czarno na biały”.

The Krawetz case never came back to Anna Kalbarczyk. It still hasn't been resolved.

Marta Gordziewicz from “Czarno na biały” asked Deputy Chairman Bojarczuk – who was then performing a purely administrative function – what regulation allowed him to do so. He did not indicate it, and in a statement sent to the reporter he only wrote that in his opinion Judge Kalbarczyk had no right to reinstate another judge to adjudicate, because she was neither the head of the department nor had she been authorized to do so by Chairman Schab.

Anna Kalbarczyk notified the prosecutor's office regarding the – as she claims – unlawful revocation of her decision.

She also reported what she claims are unlawful attempts by her superiors to force her to make rulings that would not undermine the status of the new judges.

In Zbigniew Ziobro's time, the prosecutor's office did nothing with these notifications. The current prosecutor's office is examining the possibilities of initiating proceedings in this case. Kalbarczyk is to be questioned soon and after this questioning, a decision is to be made whether to open an investigation.

In an interview with Marta Gordziewicz in “Black and White”, Judge Kalbarczyk also talks about his motion to Bodnar to demote him.

– I have never been on the side of the neo-judges. Those judges who got (promotion – ed.) and came to the Court of Appeal with various connections. I have never, never been with them and I paid a very high price for that. I paid a very high price for not being with them – she emphasizes.

Until recently, the management of the Court of Appeal in Warsaw – where Kalbarczyk worked – was held by nominees of the former Minister of Justice Zbigniew Ziobro, namely judges Piotr Schab (president of the court), Przemysław Radzik (vice president) and Michał Lasota (head of the 2nd criminal division). All of them are neo-judges who, as disciplinary spokesmen, did not accept that the status of neo-judges, including their own, was being undermined.

Judge Anna Kalbarczyk was supposed to rule in the SA in one of the lustration cases together with Radzik in February last year. Kalbarczyk decided that Radzik's presence in the panel did not guarantee an impartial verdict, so she decided to exclude him from the panel.

– At that point, Judge Radzik interrupted me – he recalls this moment of the trial in a conversation with a reporter.

The hearing was not recorded, therefore the account of its course can only be reconstructed on the basis of the files and the account of Anna Kalbarczyk.

When the judge announced that she had filed a motion to recuse Radzik, he said: – I apologize to the parties for the embarrassing performance presented by the judge in the courtroom.

– Please respond to the motion – Kalbarczyk appealed. – Please remain silent, now I am speaking – Radzik replied. And he added: – I declare that I am the vice-president of the Court of Appeal in Warsaw and the deputy disciplinary spokesman for judges of common courts.

In an interview with “Czarno na biały” the judge emphasized that Radzik “started to scare her in the courtroom in the presence of the parties and the IPN prosecutor.”

– The reality of disciplinary proceedings in the 2nd Criminal Division is evidenced by the fact that the judge can submit any documents she wants and she does submit them, and so far not a hair has been harmed on her head – said Radzik.

– And we parted ways in the courtroom. Judge Radzik did not finish. We went to the deliberation room and he told me then: “I will not initiate disciplinary proceedings for you. But please do not go down that path, because you will achieve nothing and will only ruin your health,” the judge recalls.

According to Kalbarczyk, this threat is only a taste of how the then court management tried to force her to ignore European and Polish judgments that were unfavorable for the new judges.

– I was supposed to have the only correct views. Precisely those from the perspective of neo-judges. That everything is legal, that the National Council of the Judiciary is legal, that nothing is happening at all, that there are no violations of the rule of law – she says.

Questions about the impartiality and independence of neo-judges are multiplying, and this is reflected in the judgments they issue, which can be and are already being challenged and overturned. According to information from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the European Court of Human Rights has already announced in Poland that it will consider 157 complaints from citizens about judgments issued with the participation of neo-judges in all types of courts.

– For example, there is a woman who was raped in a particularly brutal way, because that's what we have here. There is a wife who lost her husband because he was beaten to death. (…) Or there is an elderly gentleman who was cheated on his grandson, on a policeman, who lost his life savings – describes the judge in a conversation with Gordziewicz. She emphasizes that she cannot imagine a situation as a judge, when she enters the courtroom, looks such people in the eye and pronounces verdicts in the name of the Republic of Poland, and then says: “or maybe not”. – Or maybe this verdict will not stand, because I was appointed in this way and not another – she indicates.

That is why, since 2022, neo-judge Kalbarczyk has excluded other neo-judges from adjudicating. And although – as Kalbarczyk says – no judgment issued by her has been overturned due to her status, in some cases, also at the request of the parties, she excluded herself from adjudicating.

– I administer justice in the name of the Republic of Poland. Not in my name and not in the protection of my own status. If anyone had any doubts about my independence and impartiality, I take a step back and say: of course you have the right, you have the right to be judged by a court about which you will not have these doubts – he emphasizes.

Meanwhile, those who held power in the court of appeal, as disciplinary spokesmen, prosecuted judges precisely for the so-called undermining of the right of new judges to adjudicate.

Kalbarczyk found herself targeted by other neo-judges. “I was assigned to so many cases that I couldn't read them all. I had so many replacements, I was on the bench so many times that I went to the courtroom almost every day. And the job of an appeal judge is to read. You read the files – we work on the appeal, we work on the evidence gathered by the first instance,” she explains.

She also believes that putting so many cases on her had another purpose. “For example, to catch me doing something wrong,” she says.

But that's not all. “They started demanding that I issue rulings of a specific content,” she recalls. “That I shouldn't file motions to exclude a judge. That why I file dissenting opinions. That I shouldn't file a dissenting opinion. That I should go out into the courtroom when I was expected to, without knowing the files,” she enumerates.