2023-09-05 20:12:57
It was rejected by the Capital Court P. László’s motion for retrial in the case of the Teréz Boulevard bombing seven years ago. The man was sentenced to life in prison, with the possibility of parole after 30 years at the earliest.
P. László’s defender, István Keviczki tried to support the client’s innocence with eight judicial expert opinions in his motion for retrial filed in May.
However, according to the district court’s information, none of the expert opinions contain any decisive new evidence that could be suitable for refuting the findings of the final judgment, on the basis of which the man could be acquitted or a significantly lighter sentence could be imposed. Therefore, the defense counsel’s motion for a new trial was rejected.
The Metropolitan Court found the man guilty of the crime of attempted murder, the crime of misuse of explosives and explosives, and the crime of attempted terrorist crime for the bombing on Teréz körút, which took place on the evening of September 24, 2016. He therefore sentenced him to life imprisonment and a 10-year ban from public affairs, with the possibility of parole at the earliest after 25 years.
The Metropolitan Court of Appeal, acting at the second level, reclassified the accused as an attempt to commit a terrorist act, and raised the earliest date of parole to 30 years. Against the final verdict, the defendant’s lawyer submitted a motion for retrial.
As new evidence, he attached eight private legal expert opinions, which, in his opinion, make it likely that the accused should be acquitted or a significantly lighter sentence should be imposed on him. According to the submitted motion:
The newly acquired IT expert’s opinion is based on a complex analysis of all camera recordings, and also took into account camera recordings that were not part of the basic procedure. As part of the on-site inspection, the expert recorded reference data to determine the offender’s height with a tape measure and a laser, and found the offender’s height to be 167 cm and the PLG convict’s height to be 185 cm. Based on this, he ruled out that the person identified as the perpetrator in the recordings is the same as the convicted person. This expert also found that from an IT point of view, the ruling that the sender of the e-mail entitled “What we did” sent to the Ministry of the Interior was the defendant was not justified. According to the opinion of a private electronics expert, the Teréz Boulevard bombing was not committed with the bomb described in his judgment. According to the forensic chemist and environmental protection expert, the conclusion of the final judgment that the defendant kept pre-mixed, ammonium nitrate-based explosives in his property is wrong. He also indicated that a detectable amount of the ammonium nitrate dispersed during the explosion should have been deposited on the victim’s clothing, despite this, the substance could not be detected on the seized shoes, belt bag, or inside the passenger car. . In the main proceedings, it was not investigated how the remains of the charged DNA could have been placed at the site of the explosion in a remarkably regular manner. The expert opinion of the attached forensic physicist confirmed that the crime signs carrying the victim’s DNA could have been in their given position with a probability of only 0.004%, which means that the chance of external manipulation is 99.996%. According to the engineering expert’s opinion, the phone he examined is not listed in the call lists as either a caller or a called party, and the police reports on the defendant’s phone use and cell positions are therefore unfounded. According to the expert, the origin of the transferred call lists cannot be identified and cannot be used as evidence. The expert opinion of the forensic psychologist is based on a wider range of tests and exploration compared to the basic procedure, and also examines issues that were not covered by the previous two opinions. According to him, the commission of an act by the defendant can be ruled out with a probability bordering on certainty, because it is not compatible with his personality traits, socialization, his behavior during the procedure and in custody, and his confessions could be untrue.
According to the information of the court, the defense counsel wanted to make it likely that the accused should be acquitted of all criminal charges against him, therefore he proposed ordering a new trial and suspending the execution of the sentence imposed in the main case.
However, the General Prosecutor’s Office of the Capital City Appeal requested the rejection of the motion for retrial. According to the prosecutor’s reference, the evidence offered by the defense attorney cannot be considered new, because the facts related to them have already been evaluated by the courts or were the subject of rejected evidentiary motions.
According to the defense counsel, he has attached new evidence, several expert opinions of which would be enough to order a new trial. In its order, the district court stated that the majority of private expert opinions refer to the facts that arose in the main case, some expert findings can also be applied to facts that did not arise.
They also added that in the main proceedings, evidence was provided as to how P. László’s confession was made, and whether it contained untrue elements based on the camera recordings. In other words, can the fact that he was there at the scene of the crime be questioned, what is the height of the perpetrator; could the perpetrator have been someone else, could it be established whether the explosive device described in the incriminating statement and in the e-mail would have exploded; what is supported by the data content of the laptop and phone seized from him; whether the e-mail address he used was actually used by him, whether previous actions on his part can be established on these devices; how the text message was sent to the Ministry of the Interior; at the time of this, did the second part of the text, which had not been sent until then, exist; and based on the defendant’s psychological characteristics and character, whether his participation in the crime can be excluded.
The first- and second-instance courts rejected the motions for evidence related to the location of the criminal evidence containing the defendant’s DNA, because the results of the genetic expert examination exceptionally confirmed that the convicted person could be considered as the perpetrator. In relation to the opinions of the IT private expert, the panel found that the surveillance camera footage referred to by the defense was part of the investigative documents, it was subjected to a detailed analysis by the investigative authority, these reports were evaluated by the court, the relevant parts of the camera footage were viewed at the trial, and he was examined as a witness. the members of the working group dealing with recording surveillance cameras.
– announced the Capital Court.
Zsolt Szigetváry / MTI
According to the tribunal, P. László’s testimony was consistent with the available additional evidence. The attached private expert opinion is not considered new evidence from the point of view of the admissibility of retrial.
According to the district court, there was extensive evidence regarding the perpetrator’s height, and it was based on the expert opinion of a competent expert, and the possibility of distorting the camera footage was avoided. And the defendant’s IT devices and their contents were also analyzed in detail by the court in the main proceedings.
According to their point of view, the retrial is not based on the finding of the engineering expert that it cannot be verified from an IT point of view that it was sent by the defendant, because the courts established this beyond a doubt when considering and considering all the evidence.
According to the district court’s information, the connection of the explosion with the content of the “We did it” e-mail, the accused’s confession, and the materials and objects seized during the house search was extensively investigated by the court, and the expert opinions of a forensic physicist and fire engineer were evaluated.
According to the judgment panel’s opinion, the fact that the private electronics and chemical experts requested by the defense did not agree with the physicist and fire engineer experts who acted in the main case cannot provide a basis for ordering a new trial. The opinions of private experts contain assumptions and consideration of evidence in several respects. In this round, the second-instance court also dealt with why not all components of the explosive indicated by the defendant were found at the scene of the explosion.
– announced the Capital Court.
They added that the courts arrived at the conclusions described in the facts and disputed by the private electronics expert, which fall within his expert competence, based on a comparison of countless other pieces of evidence. In connection with the chemist’s expert opinion, the judgment panel noted that the fact that some components were found separately at the site also appears in the opinion of the expert heard in the main proceedings.
According to P. László’s own account, he destroyed all his clothes after the act, except for his shoes. According to the sign, the type of shoe seized was the same as the shoe shown on the camera footage. The defendant could have eliminated the additional clues that the expert had missed in the time that had passed before his arrest, i.e. the expert’s findings do not contain evidence suitable for ordering a new trial.
Regarding the private expert opinion of the forensic psychologist, the panel explained that it questioned the findings of the expert who acted in the main case. During the investigation, an expert opinion was drawn up to examine the defendant’s state of mind, and the court of first instance obtained another joint expert opinion from a psychiatrist, doctor and psychologist.
According to the district court, there was no conflict between the experts’ opinions, and they were heard by the court in the presence of each other, and they maintained their opinions. In the second-instance proceedings, the defense proposed the appointment of new psychologists and psychiatrists, which the jury justifiably rejected.
Overall, the judging panel came to the position that none of the expert opinions attached by the defense attorney contain new evidence of a fact of decisive importance for the trial, which could be suitable for refuting the findings of the final judgment, and which could result in the acquittal of the accused or a significantly lighter punishment against him. Therefore, the defense counsel’s motion for a new trial was rejected. The order is not final, as the lawyer can appeal within eight days of delivery.
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