The case of a man breeding and selling silver pheasants who was sentenced to 6 years in prison has been appealed and resulted in criminal liability exemption on October 17.
The appellate procedure was initiated due to the defendant’s appeal and particularly because of the prosecution’s protest against the entire content of the verdict.
The prosecution’s protest was based on the assessment that the defendant had been prosecuted for a crime that did not match the actual behavior.
At the time the verdict was issued, the behavior was not considered a crime under Article 244 of the Criminal Code, nor did it fully meet the criteria of any other crime. The prosecution requested exemption from criminal liability for the defendant. The appellate court ruled according to the prosecution’s recommendation.
Immediately after the first-instance verdict was announced, the prosecution protested to annul the entire first-instance verdict but requested a retrial of the case.
The reason given was that although the behavior did not constitute the crime recorded in the first-instance verdict, other possibilities needed to be considered, particularly the possibility of charging the behavior under a different crime with lighter punishment, specifically under Article 234 of the Criminal Code.
The sticking point of the story was the valuation of the property, meaning the price of the silver pheasants that were sold: if this price was lower than the threshold for criminal liability, then criminal responsibility would be exempted; if higher, further consideration of prosecution under the new crime would be needed.
However, from a practical perspective, everyone could see that no matter how the valuation was done and regardless of how large the silver pheasants were, the total value of those birds could not reach the level that would allow criminal prosecution of the person involved.
More clearly, annulling the first-instance verdict for reinvestigation was unnecessary, only causing time loss and financial waste. Therefore, before the court opened the appellate hearing, the prosecution adjusted the content of the protest: requesting exemption from criminal liability. And the court granted the exemption.
The court should not have had to handle an appeal if the first-instance court had not convicted the defendant. The first-instance court’s determination of guilt was considered to be due to the court not updating changes in legal regulations related to criteria for identifying criminal behavior during the trial.
These criteria were initially recorded in a government decree, but the amended content of the criteria was recorded in a ministerial-level circular.
This circular was issued within the proper authority of the ministerial level, confirmed in a new decree on the authority to issue legal documents within the context of institutional reform.
The lesson learned from this story is the need for caution, rigor, and especially clarity in establishing rules that limit rights that have been constitutionally and legally established.
The guiding principle is that citizens have the right to do everything that aligns with social morality and is not prohibited by law.
Prohibitions and restrictions on citizens’ rights must be clearly stated in legal documents, using easily understandable rules that can only be interpreted one way, while also not containing content that conflicts with other rules.
Another lesson is that once the nature and quantity of a behavior or event can be assessed in a common way, meaning based only on general understanding without needing expert opinion, the competent authority can confidently make decisions based on that assessment.
In the silver pheasant case mentioned above, even if there was a request for valuation appraisal of the birds, the result would not differ from common, folk methods of valuation. Therefore, reinvestigation was unnecessary as there was already sufficient convincing basis to request criminal liability exemption for the person who committed the act.
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