Brno trainee lawyer convicted of robbery at a parcel pickup point

The Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic has dismissed as manifestly unfounded a complaint filed by a trainee lawyer from Brno who was convicted of robbery at a parcel pickup point. The man argued that the verdict violated his rights and that he had merely achieved justice on his own, but the court did not accept these arguments.

The incident took place in mid-December 2023 in a shop in Brno: the man came to collect a parcel and paid almost six thousand crowns on the spot. After receiving it, he began unpacking the goods and was unhappy with the contents. The trainee disputed the payment, but the pickup point employee replied that complaints should be addressed to the seller. The man then walked around the counter and knocked the employee to the floor, and after a short scuffle the employee chose to return the money.

The courts treated these actions as robbery and imposed a two-year prison sentence suspended for a two-year probation period. The convicted man disagreed with the punishment and filed a constitutional complaint, arguing that the money had remained his own all along: in his words, taking a parcel into one's hands does not yet mean accepting it, he was only examining it and deciding whether to take it, and he opened it because the low weight made him doubt the contents. He also wrote that he had merely chosen the wrong way of pursuing an otherwise legitimate goal.

A Constitutional Court panel chaired by Judge Milan Hulmák recalled that pursuing a legitimate goal does not mean one has the right to do whatever one likes without the threat of criminal prosecution. “The complainant’s violence was directed against a person who had committed no unlawful acts against him, was not responsible for the problems with the parcel, and the complaint could easily have been settled with the seller,” Hulmák wrote.

On the website of the Czech Bar Association, the man is still listed as a trainee lawyer, but with his legal practice suspended.

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Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz