Czech trial of violent death of Romani man during police intervention continues

At the end of April, the trial continued in the case of the violent death of a Romani worker after a police intervention in the West Bohemian town of Kynšperk nad Ohří. While two local police officers have been charged with negligent homicide in the case, they remain on active duty. 

The Europe Roma CZ association has arranged for an attorney from the law offices of Vrána & Pelikán to represent the children of the deceased, Mr Ľudovít Kašpar, during the trial. The incident now on trial before the District Court in Sokolov occurred almost exactly two years ago.  

News server Romea.cz has previously reported on the previous hearings in this trial on 9 May 2012, 16 May 2012, 25 January 2014, 18 February 2014, 23 February 2014, and 25 February 2014. Now more experts and witnesses have given their testimonies.

During the previous hearing, expert medical witnesses from Prague unequivocally said the cause of Mr Kašpar’s death was swelling of the brain which they believe was caused by the police officers’ intervention. Now it was the turn of expert witness Rudolf Macháček of Sokolov.

Mr Macháček performed an autopsy immediately after Mr Kašpar’s death and wrote the first expert evaluation of the case which ruled out any causal relationship between the police intervention and the fatality. During his testimony, Mr Macháček first spent a long time describing the external wounds to the deceased that he noticed during the autopsy, including blows with a blunt object to the back and chest.

When the judge confronted him with the conclusions of the doctors from Prague, Mr Macháček did not rule out the idea that the police officers on trial had suffocated Mr Kašpar. However, he did insist that the swelling of the brain could have been due to either a heart arrhythmia or a spontaneous epileptic fit (even though Mr Kašpar reportedly had never suffered from epilepsy).    

"I had no background materials on the state of his health prior to death," Mr Macháček said. When the defense read aloud his previous claim that the defendants must have knelt on Mr Kašpar’s back for a longer time, the expert told him that in mid-August 2012, both officers had corroborated each others’ testimony that they had used the weight of their bodies to hold him down and had used their truncheons as levers between his chest and elbows.    

By doing so, the officers had stopped Mr Kašpar’s breathing, which can have fatal consequences for an obese person lying on his belly with his hands tied behind his back. Both Mr Macháček and a toxicologist from Sokolov Hospital said there was no evidence that Mr Kašpar had used alcohol prior to the police intervention. 

"There is no doubt that he had neither alcohol nor drugs in his blood," the toxicologist said. She also added that there was no way the deceased man’s blood sample might have been mixed up with that of someone else at the hospital.  

During the past few months the defense’s key witness, local homeless man Mr Jakub S., was supposed to have testified twice already. The judge had to have him removed from the courtroom once because he was strongly intoxicated with alcohol. 

Mr S. left the next hearing before he could be questioned because he allegedly did not have his summons with him. Now he has finally testified (even though he was unable to provide any proof of his identification to the court), telling the judge that he drinks four or five liters of wine daily and that on the evening in question he had been quite drunk.

On that fateful evening, Mr S. said he and his friend, Leoš N., spent the whole evening drinking, first at the Jewish cemetery and then on a little bench by the Ohře River. He said Mr Kašpar came to their bench and drank an entire box of their wine without their permission.

Mr Kašpar then, according to Mr S., grabbed a woman who was walking by and threw her into the bushes, so Mr S. and Mr. N called the police. After arriving at the scene, police officers knocked Mr Kašpar to the ground by striking his knee and handcuffed him.   

Mr S. and Mr N. then took a little walk, and when they returned 20 minutes later, an ambulance was providing medical treatment to Mr Kašpar. Mr S. also testified that local Romani people have beaten him up since then to deter him from telling the court the truth. 

Mr S. also claimed to have received threats from other witnesses who had already testified. When asked by the attorney for those harmed who had threatened him, Mr S. pointed to police officer Vítězslav N., who was seated in the courtroom.

This testimony alleges that this defendant attempted to influence a witness. The attorney also asked how much time had elapsed between Mr Kašpar allegedly downing the box of wine and the arrival of the police patrol, and Mr S. characterized it as "Two or three minutes".  

Mr Karel Kadlec, the head of the Department of Professional Preparedness at the Police Academy, had previously insisted to the court that the police intervention had been performed in accordance with the law, that it had been justified, and that it had been proportionate. "The officers kept their cool and in a way I admire them," he told news server iDNES.cz.

When Mr Kadlec was asked to explain why his opinion of the police intervention was diametrically opposed to that of renowned expert witness Mr Zdeněk Nachodský, who told the court the intervention had clearly been inadequate, Mr Kadlec said:  "Maybe it’s because he hasn’t been on duty for a long time." He also pointed out that Mr Nachodský’s evaluation had not been made available to him when he wrote his own expert statement and claimed to know him well. 

The judge then asked Mr Kadlec to describe the specific legal regulations governing police use of collapsible truncheons, and the department head admitted that he had not prepared to testify on that issue and was therefore unable to respond. When asked by the judge what officers should do when a person does not obey police orders, is behaving weirdly, and may not be legally responsible for his or her actions, the Police Academy lecturer said such considerations should not influence a police intervention. 

At the end of the hearing the judge explained that since the two expert evaluations from the field of forensic medicine were so different in their conclusions, he will be ordering a third. He then postponed the rest of the trial until 16 June, when more witnesses will testify, such as the father-in-law of the deceased, Mr Dušan S.

Several hours after the police intervention, the homeless witness Mr Jakub S. reportedly described in detail to Mr Dušan S. what took place that fateful night. Police say the two recently were involved in a mutual petty conflict during which Mr Dušan S. was arrested and remanded into custody by the court, even though he has a clean criminal record, has long been employed, and lives in the place of his permanent residence; he is now charged with witness intimidation and faces up to eight years in prison if convicted.