COPENHAGEN, BREDGADE 59

I take part in the Danish “trial of the decade”.

One of the major challenges of my practice to date has been participating as a defence-attorney witness in criminal proceedings in Denmark, before the Copenhagen Øestre Landsret (Eastern National Court).

How did this happen? Some time earlier I had undertaken the defence of a Danish defendant in a case pending before one of the district courts of southern Poland. The crime alleged to my client was closely related to the one that the Danish prosecution had pursued agains him before the Øestre Landsret. The Copenhagen court requested the Polish court to allow my client to be transported to Denmark in order to be heard as a witness at the trial. In view of my client’s indictment in Poland – for an offence that is related to the crimes that are the subject of the charges before the Copenhagen court, the Øestre Landsret found it necessary to appoint a defence counsel for my client in order to exclude any possible deterioration in his legal position as a defendant in Poland as a result of his participation in the Copenhagen trial. The defence counsel appointed there – Copenhagen lawyer Kristian Mølgaard – requested that I be allowed to participate in the case as a kind of defence counsel – an attorney. He pled he had to consult me as defence counsel for my (our) client in Poland. This request seemed “breakneck” to me, as I was not authorised to practise in Denmark and to appear before the courts there. To my surprise, however, the Øestre Landsret granted the request, pointing out the primacy of the constitutionally and conventionally guaranteed right to defence over the rules relating to the system of the local bar.

I was admitted to participate in the proceedings before the Øestre Landsret as a kind of attorney-‘co-defendant’ supporting lawyer Kristian Mølgaard. On the spot – fulfilling my obligation to consult with a Danish colleague, through an interpreter appointed for my needs – I was granted, with the consent of the local prosecutor, access to the Danish part of the case file, which was initially conducted jointly by Polish and Danish law enforcement authorities. I was able to use a significant part of the file for the purposes of my – ultimately successful – defence of the Client already after my return to Poland. During my one-week stay in Denmark I was able to see the advantages of the adversarial criminal trial (in which, to put it simply, the court only assesses the evidence called for by the prosecution, and sometimes does not do the job of the prosecution in searching for evidence of guilt, as is the case in Polish courts), the importance of the principle of “equality of arms” (according to which only the evidence taken before the court during the trial is relevant, and not – as in Poland – the minutes read out by the court, previously written down meticulously in the seclusion of the prosecutor’s offices). I was quite impressed by the obviousness with which Danish courts apply the constitutional and convention standards directly – as superior to laws.

Moreover, I managed – surely on ‘business’ – visit the Copenhagen fortress (prison) that the main character of the Danish comedy series about the adventures of the Olsen gang leaves at the beginning of each part. It was a truly unforgettable trip.