Jarosław Onyszczuk
Prosecutor since 1998, District Prosecutor’s Office of Warsaw-Mokotów, delegated out to the District Prosecutor’s Office in Lidzbark Warmiński (262 km away)
Most importantly, provisions relating to the Public Prosecutor’s Office should be included in the Constitution. This would guarantee a certain stability and prevent such frequent changes to the system.
•••
I wanted to become a professional historian when I was younger. Just before my exams, a family member persuaded me to go to law school, saying that it offered more career opportunities and that I could always later pursue history as a hobby. As for the profession of prosecutor, it was not my first choice either. I was persuaded to specialise in prosecution by a friend who claimed that it was a profession “for dynamic and imaginative people”. When I started to learn the ins and outs of working as a prosecutor, I really enjoyed it. However, I did not know if I would be able to deal with the post-mortem and when I survived it without any major hiccups, I decided that I was ready. The essence of our work is to inspect different kinds of death, corpses, tragedies, and the suchlike.
•••
I hope that in the future there will be a prosecutor’s office where young people will be happy to work, and I will encourage them to do so. Since Zbigniew Ziobro was appointed Prosecutor General in 2005, there have been so many destructive changes in the prosecution service that I would not advise anyone to enter the profession at the moment, but it is still a beautiful and valuable career, difficult of course in that it evokes so many emotions. ••• There is a case that I can never forget. After 16 years, I looked back at the case files of a murder which I was investigating as a young prosecutor in the District Prosecutor’s Office of Warsaw-Mokotów. I wanted to look at it from a different perspective, to see if anything more could be done because it was an unsolved murder of an elderly woman. One possible suspect, the husband, was known to the police but we could not prove him guilty; there was only circumstantial evidence. The chain of circumstantial evidence was broken and an indictment could not be brought against him so I had to drop the proceedings. I cannot forget the case and had to look at it again years later but I could not find any new evidence in the case.
•••
Prosecutors must be prepared to deal with all kinds of proceedings. Even if a case is not important from a social point of view, it is of the utmost importance to the individual concerned. Therefore, you have to be very sensitive. Do we lose our sensitivity with experience? Of course, but that is why it is so important to stay in touch with the public and not fall into the routine that comes with the job. I do not believe that an experienced prosecutor should be removed from difficult tasks. I find what is happening at present in the prosecution service to be completely illogical. To use a factory metaphor: “the workers on the conveyor belt have suddenly become the foremen”. From the point of view of the authorities, such a reform makes sense because it has given them the chance to have a group of obedient prosecutors and to remove all independent-thinking people from the serious tasks. It is no secret that I directly supervised the case of Mariusz Kamiński (minister and member of the ruling party); I opted for removing his immunity and bringing charges against him, which failed. That case and others like it have been dropped in the new prosecutor’s office, by the new younger prosecutors. I believe that if I had been wrong, I would and should have been stigmatised by my peers but that did not happen.
•••
The public does not realise how important the Constitution is as a legal act. Not only does it regulate the entire political system of our state but it also legitimises the government. On the one hand, it is an agreement which is supposed to limit the state in its power in relation to the citizen. On the other hand, it gives specific rights to citizens, which are currently being restricted in various ways. And this always leads to conflict; sometimes the citizen wins, sometimes the authorities. Another issue is the role of the third branch of power. The judiciary is supposed to resolve issues in dispute and also to be a check on the authorities. A guarantee of the correct functioning of power is the independence of judges and the independence of the judiciary. At the moment, those in charge of the prosecution service and the state authorities consider the prosecution service to be a branch of executive power. This is a direct result of combining the two functions of the Minister of Justice and Prosecutor General and the general approach to our role in the administration of justice. It systematically reduces the work of prosectutors primarily in investigative activities, to carrying out a certain criminal policy, which can neither be found in the law nor in the regulations. But that is how Poland’s decision-makers understand it. Of course, prosecutors are an element of the justice system and this is what the recommendations of all European bodies say, but we should be closer to the court than to state power. Prosecutors are in between, yet always closer to the judiciary. We should be the first guarantor of citizens’ rights and freedoms.
•••
A large group of prosecutors maintain a neutral attitude. They try to work diligently in their positions hoping that they will not encounter any so-called ‘sensitive’ cases requiring difficult decisions. At present, the system is structured in such a way that if a ‘political case’ comes to the prosecution office, the notification system must work. Then, functional prosecutors at the highest level decide to move the case to some appropriately-prepared department where trusted prosecutors and people can guarantee its ‘proper’ handling. I was very disappointed with the prosecutors at the highest level under Prosecutor General Andrzej Seremet (2010-2016), especially those from the General Prosecutor’s Office, but also from the old appellate prosecution offices. They were supposed to be Poland’s elite independent prosecutors, people at the highest levels of office who were supposed to understand the essence of an independent prosecution. When I look at how they are behaving, keeping silent and accepting the benefits of the ‘positive political change’, it is as if they are happy with what is happening. They should not have been prosecutors between 2010-2016.
•••
I do not fear any kind of retaliation from the prosecutor’s office, including attempts to remove me from the profession. I have already crossed the threshold of concern and fear in my mind. I am prepared for many things, even for being ‘delegated out’. I can even be transferred to a different place every year and I will survive. It will not break me and will not change my approach to the rule of law or criticising the negative things taking place in the prosecution service. It seems that being delegated away from your original posting, to a prosecutor’s office many kilometres away, is now used as a punishment if an effective disciplinary procedure cannot be implemented, and it seems to me that this cannot be done effectively in my case, at least not yet.
