The Specialised Criminal Court will have to deal with the case of former police officer Milan J., who killed three people and injured another two in Hurbanovo last June, after the Supreme Court overturned the ruling that classified the murder as a multiple murder. The case will have to be classified as a premeditated murder, the SITA newswire reported on February 15.
According to the Slovak legislation, multiple murders have to be judged by the ordinary courts, while the Specialised Criminal Court deals with premeditated murders. Premeditated murder is distinguished from multiple murders in that it is intentional with a deliberate motive.
“According to the opinion of the [Specialised Criminal] Court, it is not a particularly serious crime of premeditated murder, but the murder of a particularly serious crime, which does not belong to the scope of the Specialised Criminal Court,” said its spokesperson Katarína Kudjáková, as quoted by SITA, in the end of January. Therefore the court moved the case to the district court in Nitra.
Yet, the special prosecutor submitted a complaint over the ruling to the Supreme Court, saying that “the pre-trial results suggest that the accused acted with deliberate motive”, spokesperson for the Office of the Special Prosecutor Andrea Predajňová told SITA. She added that part of the investigation was also the examination of the mental state of the shooter.
The shootings took place on June 16, 2012, shortly after 10:00. Milan J., aged 51, parked his own car in front of the house of a Roma family and then shot dead a 44-year-old man, his 19-year-old son and 24-year-old son-in-law. A second son was shot in the lung and the son’s wife was shot in the leg. The police located the shooter about an hour later, sitting in front of the house of Hurbanovo’s mayor, Margita Zemková, SITA wrote.
Source: SITA
For more information about this story please see: Hurbanovo gunman did not commit premeditated murder, court rules
Compiled by Radka Minarechová from press reports
The Slovak Spectator cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information presented in its Flash News postings.
