Woman who killed husband trying to rape her has acquittal upheld by Poland’s Supreme Court

Poland’s Supreme Court upheld the acquittal of a woman who fatally stabbed her husband in self-defence when he tried to rape her. Despite two lower courts finding her not guilty, prosecutors wanted the woman to be jailed for murder and had sought to have those previous rulings overturned.

The incident occurred in the village Przybysławice near Kraków on 23 June 2020. The defendant’s husband – who is named as Marcin P. under Polish privacy law – came home drunk and demanded sex from his wife. Similar situations had allegedly occurred before.

At the time, the couple’s two young children were in the house. The wife, Karolina P., fled to the balcony and tried to call for help from a neighbour, reports the Polish Press Agency (PAP). The man began to push her around and Karolina P. stabbed him in the arm with a knife that she grabbed during the struggle.

That did not stop Marcin P., however, so the woman stabbed him again, this time in the chest. He collapsed and Karolina P. called the emergency services. Medics were, however, unable to save the man’s life.

After the incident, prosecutors charged Karolina P. with murder, seeking a prison sentence of eight years. She spent six months in pretrial detention.

However, in March 2021, Kraków’s regional court acquitted her, finding that she had acted in justified self-defence. That ruling was upheld by the city’s court of appeal in October of the same year.

But prosecutors continued to believe that Karolina P. was guilty of murder. They argued that her husband was so drunk she did not have to use a knife to defend herself and could instead have startled him by screaming, reported local newspaper Gazeta Krakowska.

That led prosecutors to issue an appeal to the Supreme Court. Yesterday, it dismissed their case, upholding the earlier decisions to acquit the 38-year-old Karolina P.

In justifying the ruling, Supreme Court judge Ryszard Witkowski emphasised that they had found no blatant errors of law in the court of appeal’s decision that would allow it to be challenged.

He said that the prosecution’s plea was based on a different assessment of the same evidence and a challenge to the assessment of the credibility of the main evidence, that is the defendant’s statements.

“Neither a different assessment nor a challenge to the credibility of the evidence is sufficient grounds to change or overturn the ruling,” said Witkowski, quoted by PAP. “The court had no doubts whatsoever about the course of the incident, as well as the assumption that there was a circumstance of necessary defence.”

Karolina P.’s lawyer, Katarzyna Król, welcomed the decision. “The courts have determined that a woman’s sexual freedom itself is a more important good than the life of the abuser who attacked her,” she said after the ruling.

Human rights groups have warned that violence against women and girls, particularly domestic violence, intensified during the coronavirus pandemic. In Poland, calls to a helpline for victims of domestic violence rose 50% in the first month of lockdown.

But even before the pandemic, a government-commissioned report found that 63% of women in Poland had experienced some form of domestic violence. It also discovered that 10% of men in Poland believe there is no such thing as rape within marriage.

Concern was heightened in 2020 when the justice minister began the process of seeking to withdraw Poland from a European convention on preventing violence against women, arguing that it “promotes LGBT”.

The move received support from Poland’s Catholic church. However, the prime minister delayed the decision by referring it to the Constitutional Tribunal for a ruling.

That same year, the justice ministry put forward legislation that would make it possible to immediately separate perpetrators of domestic violence from their victims. It received support from all parties in parliament apart from the far right.

In 2021, the Council of Europe (CoE) praised Poland for taking “important measures” to combat violence against women. But it also outlined further steps that the country should take, including changing the legal definition of rape.

Main image credit: Martyna Niecko / Agencja Gazeta

Alicja Ptak

Alicja Ptak is senior editor at Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She previously worked for Reuters.