I. Czym jest przedawnienie karalności?
Are restrictions on the effective operation of the justice system beneficial to offenders?
For the purposes of this entry, it should be noted that under the current Penal Code, crimes are divided by the legislator into felonies and misdemeanours. A crime is a prohibited act punishable by imprisonment for a term not shorter than 3 years or by a more severe punishment, while a misdemeanour is a prohibited act punishable by a fine exceeding 30 daily rates or over PLN 5,000.00, restriction of liberty exceeding one month or imprisonment exceeding one month.
One of the purposes of criminal proceedings is to establish whether a criminal act has been committed and whether it constitutes a criminal offence, and then to detect the perpetrator of that offence and hold him or her criminally liable.
The institution of the statute of limitations of a criminal offence is based on the assumption that due to the lapse of time, the preventive and educational effects, as well as the need to satisfy the public’s sense of justice – which the punishment of the offender is supposed to bring – are weakened.
As a result of the lapse of time as defined by the legislator, the committed act remains a crime, although its perpetrator will no longer be able to bear criminal responsibility for its commission – even if the evidence uncovered in the course of criminal proceedings does not raise any doubts. In the event of the effective expiry of the criminal statute of limitations, criminal proceedings against the perpetrator of the offence should not be initiated, and those that have been initiated should be discontinued.
At the same time, it is worth pointing out that the institution of the statute of limitations of punishability experiences certain exceptions – it does not find its application in the case of crimes against peace, humanity and war crimes, as well as to the intentional offence of murder, grievous bodily injury, grievous bodily injury or deprivation of liberty combined with particular torment, committed by a public official in connection with the performance of official duties.
II. Limitation periods for criminal offences
As a general rule, under the current legal order, the perpetrator of an offence cannot be held criminally responsible if a certain number of years have elapsed since the offence was committed, ie:
| Deadline | Crime |
| 30 years |
for the crime of murder
|
| 20 years |
in the case of another criminaloffence (e.g. the offence of falsifying invoices containing a total amount of receivables, the value or total value of which is greater than ten times the amount defining a property of great value, i.e. PLN 10,000,000.00 – Art. 271a §1 of the Penal Code in conjunction with Art. 277a §1 of the Penal Code)
|
| 15 years |
in the case of an offence punishable by imprisonment exceeding 5 years(e.g. money laundering offence – Article 299 §1 of the Penal Code, fraud offence – Article 286 §1 of the PenalCode)
|
| 10 years |
in the case of an offence punishable by imprisonment exceeding 3 years(e.g. the offence of forging a document or using such a document as authentic – Art. 270 §1 of the PenalCode)
|
| 5 years |
in the case of other offences(e.g. the offence of extorting an untruth – Article 272 of the Penal Code, the offence of favouring creditors – Article 302 §1 of the Penal Code)
|
| 1 year/3 years[1]. | In the case of an offence prosecuted by private prosecution(e.g. an offence of defamation – Article 212 §1 of the Penal Code or insult – Article 216 §1 of the Penal Code).
|
Furthermore, it should be noted that in the case where criminal proceedings have already been initiated and are pending against the perpetrator – the limitation periods indicated in the table above are extended by 10 years (in the case of cases prosecuted by private prosecution – by 5 years).
[1] The punishment in this case ceases one year after the victim became aware of the person of the perpetrator of the offence, but no later than three years from the time the offence was committed.
III. Upływ terminu przedawnienia karalności w dobie COVID-19
From 20 March 2020 to 16 May 2022, Poland was under an epidemic state introduced as a result of the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus causing the COVID-19 infectious disease (currently, the state is referred to as an epidemic emergency due to a reduction in the number of daily increments of infections).
The legislator faced an unprecedented challenge, which to date has negatively affected the efficiency of the judiciary (e.g. by the limitations related to the conduct of hearings in the traditional form and the lack of an adequate technical infrastructure that would enable the conduct of a criminal trial in a remote form, with the use of devices enabling remote communication) – decided to introduce into the legal system the Act of 2 March 2020 on special solutions related to the prevention, prevention and combating of COVID-19, other infectious diseases and crisis situations caused by them (Journal of Laws of 2020, item 374, i.e. Journal of Laws of 2021, item 2095, hereinafter: “Covidowa Act“).
Pursuant to the wording of Article 15zzr1 of the Covidowa Act, during the period in which an epidemic emergency or a state of epidemics declared on account of COVID-19 is in force and for a period of six months after their revocation, the statute of limitations for the punishment of an act and the statute of limitations for the execution of a sentence in criminal and fiscal offence cases does not run.
The entry into force of the Covid Law and its repeated amendments, caused problems with the practical interpretation of the regulations contained therein, often leading to the development of two opposing lines of jurisprudence.
One such problem was the lack of a precise indication as to whether the suspension of the running of the limitation period specified by the Covidium Act, refers only to criminal acts committed as of 31 March 2020 (i.e. as of the date of entry into force of the above-mentioned regulation) or also refers to the limitation of punishability of such acts committed before that date?
These doubts were significant in their significance, as they could lead, for example, to unjustified discontinuation of criminal proceedings due to the lapse of the prescribed time from their commission – to the detriment of persons injured by the crime.
The state of uncertainty signalled above lasted for more than two years. The regulation of the Covid Act found its unequivocal completion only on 14 September 2022, when the Supreme Court, in a resolution adopted by a seven-judge panel of the Criminal Chamber (ref. I KZP 9/22), indicated that the suspension of the running of the period of limitation of punishability in cases of offences, fiscal offences and misdemeanours from 31 March 2020 applies to the limitation of punishability of these offences regardless of whether they were committed as of 31 March 2020 or before that date.
As an aside, it should be pointed out that the current wording of Article 15zzr1 of the Covid Law does not provide for the suspension of the limitation period for misdemeanours and fiscal offences. Without going into the intricacies of the amendments to the aforementioned Act, it should be pointed out that in the aforementioned cases, the expiry of the limitation period was suspended for the period from 31 March 2020 to 24 May 2020.
When can limitation periods be expected to run again in criminal and fiscal offence cases? Unfortunately, there is currently no answer to this question, as it depends on the decision of the Minister of Health to revoke the state of emergency. On the other hand, in view of the Covidium Act in force, it is certain that the procedural situation of suspects/accused persons will deteriorate in comparison with the legal status in force prior to the entry into force of the aforementioned Act.
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