Časopis Státní zastupitelství 5/2018

Mgr. Jiří Pavlík, Deputy of the Supreme Public Prosecutor, Supreme Public Prosecutor’s Office

JUDr. Jakub Chromý, Ph.D., public prosecutor, Analytical and Legislative Department, Supreme Public Prosecutor’s Office, email: JChromy@nsz.brn.justice.cz

Mgr. Tomáš Husák, statistician, Supreme Public Prosecutor’s Office

In Article 100(1) the Constitution of the Czech Republic states that territorial self-governing units are territorial communities of citizens having the right to self-governance. It is beyond any doubt that active participation in the self-government of municipalities and regions in the form of discharging the office of assembly members, councillors, mayors or regional presidents is praiseworthy and challenging work. However, it is also associated with certain liability. In law, liability means the necessity to bear the consequences of particular acts or omissions. In cases of utmost importance, the protection of community goods is secured through the system of criminal law. Like other citizens of the Czech Republic, the elected officials of territorial self-governing units are subject to criminal liability for committed criminal offences. Unlike other types of representatives in the wider sense, such as parliamentary deputies or senators, assembly members and councillors discharging their office are not equipped with the benefaction of immunity or the institute of approval of criminal prosecution by the assembly or council, of which they are members.

Prof. JUDr. Jaroslav Fenyk, Ph.D., DSc., Univ. Priv. Prof., vice chairman of the Constitutional Court, Faculty of Law, Masaryk University in Brno, email: Jaroslav.Fenyk@usoud.cz

From a historical and general point of view, ethics are a concept that mainly designates a custom, manner, or a tradition. Ethics have a lot in common with morality as a system of generally accepted customs and manners. Ethics and morality mingle to a certain extent since the judge’s authority in criminal proceedings is directly proportional to public trust in the judge’s moral qualities. Ethical behaviour means respecting generally accepted customs, manners or traditions. We, on the other hand, speak of a special kind of ethics – the so-called professional ethics or professional ethical behaviour delimited by the strict framework of Czech criminal proceedings.

JUDr. Lenka Bradáčová, Ph.D., High Public Prosecutor in Prague, email: podatelna@vsz.pha.justice.cz

The professional ethics of lawyers are sometimes denoted as professional liability and it is not without reason. Public prosecutors encounter with ethical conduct standards at the very start of their professional career when one of the preconditions for their employment as public prosecutors of the Czech Republic is to take an unconditional pledge before the minister of justice. The pledge contains, among other commitments, an undertaking that the public prosecutor shall safeguard the dignity of their profession in both their professional and private life. Dignity is perceived as an attribute of high social prestige, with which respect and regard of others are associated. It may be perceived as a projection of a special complex of moral values into attitudes and behaviour, whether they are internalised values or institutional values.

JUDr. Tomáš Sokol, lawyer, email: TSokol@akbsn.eu

When contemplating ethics in criminal proceedings, the first thing that comes to mind is the question of whether the term itself has any specific content. According to one of many definitions, ethics are a science examining the values and principles guiding human conduct in situations where there is a possibility of choice based on one’s free will. Thus, the ethics of criminal proceedings should deal with choosing a procedure from among procedural alternatives specified for a particular case by the Code of Criminal Procedure. The above stated question is thereby modified to whether situations may arise in criminal proceedings that legally permit several options for further procedure, yet only one or only some of them are ethical. The logical question then is who or what determines the „correct“ ethical procedure.

Doc. JUDr. Filip Ščerba, Ph.D., Head of the Department of Criminal Law, Faculty of Law, Palacký University Olomouc, email: filip.scerba@upol.cz

In criminal law, there have always been controversial issues, to which the members of individual criminal-law professions (lawyers, public prosecutors, judges, police officers) find an acceptable solution with great difficulty, mainly due to the different tasks fulfilled by them in criminal proceedings and the resultant different angle of view, from which they perceive the given problem. To make matters more complicated, there are only a few opportunities that would allow these individuals to share their arguments on the given topic and to clarify their opinions. There is hardly space for such discussions within concrete criminal-law cases and, as a rule, scientific conferences are not conceived to fulfil such purpose.