Why?
I am sitting bare-knuckled without answers to these questions, and for what reason – let everyone find their own answers. Everyone has their own "why," and recently I have lost many of these "whys." But one thing I have not lost is faith in justice. I do not mean the kind of faith that the government apparatus and system supposedly guarantees, but faith in the fact that you reap what you sow.
Let us now look together (or look now with me) at a number of facts that, regardless of whether they were even possible, were the deciding factor in me being
convicted of robbery and attempted murder. I lived with my grandparents in Hořice during the week because of school, and would return home to Liberec on weekends. The crime occurred on 21 February 2013 at a men's and children's hair salon in a Hořice housing development, where I wanted to get a haircut after an English lesson. However, as it was just before closing the hairdresser did not take me. At home, on Saturday, 23 February my mother told me what had happened in Hořice and that they were looking for witnesses. I called the police station myself to tell them that I had been at the hair salon.
Due to many inconsistencies in the timeline, I would like to take this moment to mention the timing of key events. The crime occurred on Thursday, at approximately 5:00 p.m. At 6:20 p.m. the victim's son from her first marriage, Ukranian Mr Moroz, found his mother at this salon. He allegedly did not live with her, they did not keep in touch very much, and she even kicked him out of the house due to his many debt collection orders. The reasons for his visiting the hair salon differed according to subsequent individual witness statements, and for reasons unknown this lead was never pursued.
(How did Moroz find her?)
On the same day that I spoke to the police, i.e. 23 February, three investigators arrived from Hradec Králové and questioned me for several hours. They took clothing that the potential perpetrator wore, i.e. jeans, a dark jacket, and all of my shoes with them. They took the clothes just like that, in their bare hands, no gloves, without using any sort of evidence bags, and placed them in the boot of their police car. That same day, the three detectives also stopped by the crime scene. Allegedly, they were looking for some of the victim's fingernails. There were no crime scene technicians or witnesses present during the search, and no video recordings or photographs were made.
On Tuesday, 26 February, the victim woke up from her coma in the intensive care unit. At first, two detectives questioned her at 2:00 p.m., without the presence of a witness and without a doctor, and the result became part of the official record, which included her signature. The witness, however, informed the court later that she did not remember any such interview and that the signature was not hers. The court refused any further investigation of the signature. That same day, the victim was interviewed again, at approximately 5:00 p.m., this time in the presence of a prosecutor and a judge. A video recording of this interview was made, which was, however, withheld, and was not released until the day of the first judgement, which was in January 2014. Although they were taken the same day, each of the victim's statements were diametrically different. She did not recognise me from a photographic line-up, and even eliminated me as the perpetrator.
Two weeks after the crime, I was arrested at school in front of many other students by approximately 14 plain-clothes officers after they had followed me for roughly 1 km in four cars. They threw me to the ground and took me to Hradec Králové. I was given a public defender, charged immediately, and a bond hearing was ordered, which was granted without delay. It was not until that evening that my grandparents were informed of the situation as their residence was being searched. My parents had left for a planned holiday two days before the crime, so they were unable to react in any way.
The victim was questioned again after roughly six weeks, but her testimony regarding the description of the perpetrator changed again. A reconstruction of the incident was even staged at the scene of the crime. Despite the fact that the defence had shown that discoveries made during the search of the crime scene made the victim's version physically impossible, the police failed to address it. No weapon was found, the keys from the place of business were not found, and neither was the wallet that was supposed to have been stolen.
What, then, was the basis of my conviction? The basis was the testimony of Ms Šlechtová and the claims of the victim. The witness, Ms Šlechtová, was looking through a window on the 4th floor of the building across the way when she saw the perpetrator enter the hair salon at 4:59 p.m. The victim stated that the last paying customer was a small boy, and then (in this moment, I do not know if the perpetrator was already there, or if she has just seen him) came the perpetrator. Interviews with Ms Šlechtová indicate that the perpetrator that she saw from the window came from a different direction than I did, and he was wearing different clothing and had blond hair that was close-cut at the neck. He did not have a backpack, was not holding a piece of a log, and did not even have gloves. Why did the court completely ignore other witnesses that unmistakeably saw me at 4:55 p.m. when I was leaving the hair salon? At 5:00 p.m., i.e. the time that the perpetrator was carrying out his robbery and assault, I was already at home with my grandparents, who testified to this fact. At 5:10 p.m. I was communicating on my Facebook page. Several witnesses also describe my behaviour that evening as completely normal, I had no motive, and there was no evidence that I had used the money that was stolen (which was CZK 10,000) for anything. Additionally, according to a court expert, the nature of the attack would have certainly left traces of blood on the attacker to a height of at least 1.2 metres. When no traces of blood were found on the clothing, the judge determined that the clothing could have been washed, or something else. The fact that it was not washed and no other clothing was found was proven by expert examination. On the contrary, traces of blood that did not belong to me or the emergency medical technicians were found in the locked hair salon. This blood did not belong to the victim, and the DNA found behind her fingernails did not belong to me either. The court did not address the fact that the DNA was never identified. Apparently, it could have belonged to a customer. When the bloody shoe prints were examined again, they did not match any of the emergency medics or the family; they were never explained, but in no way did they match my shoe's shapes or size in any way.
So, let us summarise what was the basis of my original conviction in January 2014 (?). The basis was the testimony of the victim, who never identified the perpetrator in a photographic line-up, not even during a physical line-up, in which she indicated a different suspect. The eyewitness claimed that the only person in the salon after the little boy was the perpetrator, therefore it must have been me, even despite the fact that her description of the perpetrator did not match my appearance at all. According to memory impairment assessments ordered by the Czech Police, educational psychologist Mgr. Čermáková testified that the victim does not have any memory disorders and remembers everything perfectly. A complaint was filed against this expert, and the prosecution even excluded her from their line of argument during subsequent judicial hearings. Since the victim described the perpetrator as not having glasses, a report by Dr Rozsíval, an expert in the field of ophthalmology, claims that, although I have a 5-6 diopter, I could have done it without wearing my glasses. All witness statements clearly indicate that none of the witnesses ever saw me without my glasses. According to Ms Šlechtová's testimony, insisting that she did not see anyone else other than the person she described, it must have been me. Another piece of incriminating evidence was the scent traces that were found during the third search of the crime scene in places I had not even been, and where they found a 30 x 16 x 6 cm clump of hair that was not photographed, but was only described. During the first search of the crime scene, which was documented by photographs and a DVD recording, they did not find any shoe prints belonging to me, and scent trace evidence was negative. Why, then, during the third search of the crime scene that took place seven days after the incident, did they find evidence of my presence that were not there during the first, documented, search?
After I filed my appeal, the High Court dismissed the judgement in March 2014 in order to discuss a number of supplementary expert opinions. In May 2014, the Court of First Instance in Hradec Králové convicted me once again, despite the fact that it was proven that the police had caused the contamination of the scent trace evidence, and despite the fact that renowned physicians submitted two expert statements that definitively confirm the victim's memory impairment. In June 2014, the High Court confirmed the decision while rejecting a revised expert opinion on the victim's memory, considering it superfluous. With this, they convicted me categorically.
For this reason, in October 2014, a complaint for a legal violation was filed with the Ministry of Justice, and in February 2015, a legal violation complaint was filed with the High Court. A hearing at the High Court in May 2015 confirmed that the law was violated at least seven times and that evidence exists that eliminates me as the perpetrator. I was released from prison. The High Court returned the case for reconsideration with mandatory instructions for the lower court.
The Hradec Králové Regional Court ordered another hearing for September 2015. In the meantime, the prosecutor asked the Prison Directorate-General for information on all fellow prisoners with whom I had come into contact. A total of 19 prisoners were questioned, of which one claimed that I had confessed to him in prison. This sole prisoner was Mr Funda, who was sentenced to 25 years for the brutal murder of a friend. Funda was mentally ill and his psychological diagnosis labelled him as a person devoid of values with inclinations to self-preservation. However, his June 2015 testimony was not brought up in court until February 2016. Why was the Official Report of prisoner Funda's interrogation added to the record four days before the judicial hearing in February 2016?
Prior to the hearing in September 2015, a meeting between Detective Jušta (who had been investigating the case) and the victim took place, in which the victim remembered in court that I was the perpetrator because she recognised the perpetrator by his hair and smile. Additional details of the assault concurred with the previous statements, but they were physically impossible. Experts from the Prague General Hospital were present at the hearing, and they confirmed that it is possible for the victim to remember something like this, but that there needs to be a so-called forensic memory assessment in order to determine the credibility of the claim. This assessment was ordered by the Regional Court in October 2015, and was presented in the court in February 2016. The judgement clearly states that the victim has an episodic memory disorder, and her statement cannot be considered credible. And, well, that is the reason why the report of Funda's interrogation appeared four days before the judicial hearing in February 2016.
Prisoner Funda, who was brought to the hearing in a hood and under the influence of high doses of antidepressants and antiepileptic medication, was unable to squeeze out testimony at all, and for this reason, the judge read the necessary paragraph from the given report aloud. Funda then agreed with what the judge had read.
Despite the fact that there was an abundance of evidence and testimony from the defence, the Regional Court rejected them and convicted me once again, based on Funda's testimony, the victim's restored memory, and the scent trace evidence. It did not in the least respect the mandatory instructions of the High Court, and, despite the injunction, it ignored their verdicts and exploited them with purpose. Another appeal was filed.
The testimony of two prisoners, who had contacted my solicitor informing him that Funda had boasted to them that he made everything up to benefit himself, was rejected. All additional repeated requests were also rejected, including an interview of a witness to whom an investigating officer confessed to manipulating evidence in the Lukáš Nečesaný case. The witness sent her testimony via a solicitor to the High Court, and this matter is now being investigated by the General Inspection of Security Forces.
Thus, the verdict of the case was based on the victim's testimony, the testimony of Ms Šlechtová, and on scent trace evidence. Prisoner Funda, whose testimony was considered key evidence in the lower court, was rejected as a witness by the High Court.
A total of three expert opinions definitively corroborated the victim's memory disorder, however these were ignored by the court, which worked with the hypothesis that she could have had the capacity to remember. Scent trace evidence at the scene of the crime that was unquestionably contaminated by the police officer was still considered credible evidence, for which comparison to all investigators was never carried out. In Ms Šlechtová's testimony, the court did not follow the directives of the High Court, and only considered that which was useful to them. According to the verdicts of the High Court, the testimonies of witnesses Kos and Vandličková completely eliminated me as the perpetrator, however, the court ignored these witnesses.
The motive of this crime was supposedly that I was in debt up to my ears, which was not supported by evidence of debt settlement or greater spending. I still have not mentioned how this crime was supposed to have taken place. The assault weapon was allegedly a piece of a birch log, despite the fact that medical documents do not mention any foreign matter on the victim's head. No pieces of bark were found either at the crime scene or on my clothing.
In the introduction, I mentioned the importance of the timeline of the crime, and how this fact also eliminates me as the perpetrator. The evidence listed above and witness testimony show that at approximately 4:55 p.m. I entered the hair salon, where the hairdresser did not want to take me because it was right before closing time. As I was leaving the hair salon, I was seen by witness Kos, and then, roughly 50 metres from the hair salon, by Ms Vandlíčková. At 5:00 p.m., I was already greeting my grandmother at her door, who lives approximately 350-400 metres from the hair salon. At 5:10 p.m. I was already on Facebook.
At 4:59 p.m., the perpetrator entered the hair salon, described by witness Šlechtová as a close-cut blond man with a waist-long jacket, no gloves or backpack, who came from a different direction. At 6:20 p.m., the son finds his mother in the locked hair salon, and calls an ambulance. What remains inexplicable is why his financial situation, numerous debt collection orders, and sales of soft drugs in Hořice do not make him the subject of further investigation. What is curious is the fact that the son, a witness awaiting official interrogation and a line-up, was allowed to visit his mother at the intensive care unit after she had awoken from her coma, without any witnesses present.
So, according to the verdict, within the span of 10 minutes at an entirely unfamiliar place, I was supposed to have been able to assault and fight with the victim in several areas of the hair salon where they found blood evidence, find her money in a drawer and her purse, and then even close the zipper on the purse and close the drawer. After that, I was to have locked the hair salon, gotten rid of the 45 centimetre long birch log, the purse, and the keys, and run, without any traces of blood nor agitation, home to my grandmother and immediately began communicating on Facebook – is this even physically or humanly possible?
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Jan Šinágl, 15.11.2016
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