NCJ Number
147344
Journal
Archives of Criminology Dated: (1993) Pages: 133-190
Date Published
1993
Length
58 pages
Annotation
This paper analyzes the decisions of the Criminal and Military Departments of the Supreme Court in Poland in cases involving the rehabilitation of political offenders convicted between 1944 and 1988.
Abstract
The analysis focused on 531 cases examined due to extraordinary appeal that concerned 1,276 persons and 9 cases involving 33 persons in which proceedings were reinstituted. A total of 56.7 percent of the cases were from the years 1944-56, when penal policy was extremely repressive. Overall, the most frequent decision was acquittal or discontinuance of proceedings. The most frequently quoted basis of acquittal was the absence of the statutory features of an offense and of the factual ground for indictment. In 52 cases, defendants were acquitted due to the absence of the social danger of the act. The results confirmed that penal law was a peculiar instrument of totalitarian government; the trials of that period aimed at disposing of real or imagined political opponents. Tables, footnotes, and appended case summaries and list