The District Court for Warsaw-Mokotów upheld the decision to discontinue the investigation into the unintentional causation of Barbara Skrzypek’s death. An appeal against the earlier ruling was filed by the deceased’s relatives, who pointed to alleged irregularities in the assessment of her interrogation. However, the court found that the arguments presented did not provide grounds to change the decision.
Barbara Skrzypek – a long-time associate of the leader of Law and Justice (PiS) – died on March 15. This occurred three days after she had been interrogated at the prosecutor’s office for around five hours. The proceedings were conducted by prosecutor Ewa Wrzosek, assisted by two attorneys representing the auxiliary prosecutor. The legal representative of the interrogated woman was denied participation. Many commentators suggested that Skrzypek’s death could have been linked to the stress she experienced during the interrogation.
An investigation was initiated into the unintentional causation of Skrzypek’s death. In December last year, the Warsaw-Praga Regional Prosecutor’s Office announced its discontinuation. According to the prosecution, no third-party actions occurred, the death resulted from a heart attack, and stress related to the interrogation had no impact on her death. An appeal against this decision was filed by the legal representative of the aggrieved parties – the closest relatives of the late Barbara Skrzypek. According to a statement provided on Friday by the spokesperson of the Praga prosecutor’s office, prosecutor Karolina Staros, the appeal argued that there had been errors in the findings regarding the course and assessment of Skrzypek’s interrogation conducted by prosecutor Wrzosek. As stated, the appeal challenged the opinion of experts in forensic medicine and cardiology, and also alleged that a number of procedural provisions had been violated, which allegedly led to an erroneous decision to discontinue the investigation.
Final decision
At Monday’s hearing, the District Court for Warsaw-Mokotów decided not to uphold the appeal and maintained the contested decision to discontinue the investigation into her death. The decision to discontinue the investigation is therefore final.
Prosecutor Staros stated that the court deemed the appeal entirely unfounded. In its reasoning, the court emphasized that “the prosecutor in the conducted investigation fully exhausted the evidentiary initiative, the collected evidence is complete and comprehensive, and thus sufficient to establish the factual findings relevant to the case and issue a substantive procedural decision.”
The court also added that “the prosecutor did not violate any provisions of criminal procedure during the investigation.” It was further noted that, contrary to the appellant’s request, there were no grounds to obtain a new opinion from another panel of experts. The court stressed that the prosecutor ensured active participation in the proceedings for the representatives of the aggrieved parties, allowing supplementary expert opinions in forensic medicine and cardiology to be obtained and enabling the complainants’ legal representative to question the experts – as reported in the statement by prosecutor Staros.
In the court’s view, the prosecutor correctly concluded that the legal elements of unintentional causation of death had not been met, and that “the individuals conducting and participating in the interrogation of the injured party Barbara Skrzypek did not violate the rules of caution in the handling of the legal interest of health and life of Barbara Skrzypek.”
The court also stated that “the prosecutor adopted the correct legal qualification of the event, based on a properly established factual state,” and that the arguments of the complainants’ legal representative “proved to be unfounded.”