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The Plovdiv Court of Appeal changed the measure of non-abortion of Lyubomir Petrov from “detention in custody” to “house arrest”, and the same will be controlled by the RU of the Ministry of the Interior Hisarya, as well as by means of electronic monitoring.
Ljubomir has been charged with intentionally killing Krasimira Kukovska, the woman with whom he lived on a conjugal basis, on 11/09/2020 in the village of Begovo, Plovdiv district, and the murder was committed in conditions of domestic violence and with gainful purpose – crime under Art. 116 paragraph 1, item 6a and item 7, Article 115 of the Criminal Code. The case was in its judicial phase, from where it was returned to the District Prosecutor’s Office due to serious omissions and procedural violations during the investigation.
The Plovdiv Court of Appeal, after reviewing the evidence attached to the case and taking into account the opinions of the parties, finds the following established from a factual and legal point of view:
The complaint filed on behalf of Lyubomir Petrov, as filed within the time limit, by a legally legitimate party – duly authorized by the defendant’s defense counsel, against an appealable court act, appears to be procedurally admissible, and in essence – well-founded.
The District Court is right, writes the Appellate Court in its reasons, that the accusation of committing a serious, deliberate crime, punishable by serious penalties, including imprisonment, is still current against Lyubomir Petrov, and that in the covers in the case, there is no evidence available that would substantially shake the well-founded assumption of Lyubomir Petrov’s complicity in the incriminated activity.
But, according to the Court of Appeal, there are grounds for amending the remand order:
First, the elapsed time period from the detention of the accused to today – 1 year. and 10 m., of which 1 year and 4 m. in the pre-trial phase of the process, which term is close to the maximum possible for detention in this phase of the process, in which the case is again currently located. The view of the Strasbourg court is known that the dangers of absconding and committing a crime logically decrease with the passage of time during which the suspect is detained.
Second, the witnesses incriminating the accused, albeit indirectly, have already been questioned numerous times, including before the court panel that considered the case in its judicial phase, with the participation of all parties in the trial. Therefore, even if an attempt is made to motivate these persons to recant their testimony, in the case of available testimony given before a judge, in the presence of the accused and his defenders, these attempts are basically doomed to failure. Therefore, the district court incorrectly justified the continued detention of the accused on the danger of influencing these witnesses.
Thirdly, it is fundamentally true what the District Court said, that no groundless inaction of the investigating authorities has been found so far, but there can be no dispute that this investigation continues, and not through the fault of the accused, but through the fault of the public prosecution, whose representative acted in such a way as to cast doubt on his impartiality.
And it is the latter that necessitates repeating a significant number of the performed procedural-investigative actions, which is inevitably related to the continuation of the investigation over a long period of time. There is no legal and legally justifiable reason for Lyubomir Petrov to continue to suffer the most severe measure of remand due to flaws in the investigation, admitted by the prosecutor’s office. The decision of the Court of Appeal is final.
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