The prosecutor's office in Kościerzyna appealed against the court's decision, which changed Waldemar Bonkowski's sentence from community service to monetary benefits. This was the second part of the sentence of a former PiS senator who was convicted of particularly cruel treatment of a dog. The animal did not survive.
Waldemar Bonkowski (he agreed to give his name and surname – ed.) finished serving the first sentence imposed on him (3 months' imprisonment) on October 4, 2024. – This sentence was served in full – part of it in prison, part in the electronic surveillance system – said Judge Mariusz Kaźmierczak, press spokesman for the District Court in Gdańsk for criminal matters.
He added that the second penalty imposed on the convict was one year of restriction of liberty, which consisted in performing unpaid, supervised work for social purposes for 30 hours a week. He explained that the convict should have started serving this sentence immediately after completing the prison sentence.
– Waldemar Bonkowski appeared at the request of the probation officer, with whom he was to agree on the type and scope of work and submitted a declaration that due to his health condition he was unable to perform the sentence in the form of work – said Judge Kaźmierczak.
Waldemar BonkowskiAdam Warżawa/PAP
The convict's defense attorney then submitted to the District Court in Kościerzyna (this court supervises the execution of the penalty of restriction of liberty by the convict) to change the form of execution of the penalty of restriction of liberty from personal work to the deduction of part of the monthly remuneration for work.
Judge Kaźmierczak added that on December 11 this year The District Court in Kościerzyna accepted the application and changed the manner of executing the prisoner's sentence from community service to deducting 15% of his/her salary for a period of one year. his remuneration for work for a social purpose indicated by the court. It was the Hospice in Kościerzyna.
The prosecutor's office appealed against the court's decision
In its justification for the decision, the District Court referred to the circumstance raised by the convict's defense attorney, i.e. the health condition that prevented Bonkowski from performing physical work.
On Monday, prosecutor Marcin Lubiński, head of the District Prosecutor's Office in Kościerzyna, announced that on December 19 this year. the prosecutor's office appealed against the decision of the District Court in Kościerzyna to the District Court in Gdańsk.
– We found that the decision of the District Court in Kościerzyna was unfair. We believe that the court could not replace the penalty of restriction of liberty with a deduction of 15 percent from the amount received by the convict pensions and income from agricultural activities, because such a deduction can only be made from the employment remuneration of a convict who is in an employment relationship,” said the prosecutor.
He explained that the complaint should be submitted to the court that issued the challenged decision and only when the court finds no grounds to change its decision, it forwards the case files together with the complaint to the appellate court. He informed that the District Court in Gdańsk had not yet received the case files with a complaint against the decision described above.
He was pulling the dog on a rope behind his car
In April this year District Court in Gdańsk sentenced a former PiS senator for abusing the dog with particular cruelty, which consequently died. Bonkowski pulled a dog on a rope behind his car in March 2021, which was recorded by another driver.
In addition to the three-month prison sentence (he served part of the sentence under electronic monitoring), Bonkowski was also sentenced to, among others, for a year of community service. Until the end of the trial, the former senator pleaded not guilty. After the verdict, he claimed that he was the victim of a political campaign.
Waldemar Bonkowski won a senatorial seat in the 2015 parliamentary elections as a candidate of Law and Justice. In February 2018, after a series of anti-Semitic posts on social media, the president of PiS Jarosław Kaczyński suspended him as a party member. Bonkowski became an unaffiliated senator. In the 2019 elections, he ran for re-election from his own electoral committee, but did not get into parliament.
Radio Gdańsk was the first to report the matter of filing a complaint against the decision of the District Court in Kościerzyna.
Main photo source: Adam Warżawa/PAP