The Senate is examining a criminal case for causing a serious traffic accident in Jurmala

On April 3, the Department of Criminal Affairs of the Senate examined a criminal case in which the driver was accused of violating traffic rules, as a result of which two victims died and two victims were seriously and moderately seriously injured. In the case, it was evaluated whether the court of appeal justifiedly left unchanged the acquittal of the first instance court. After examining what was stated in the prosecutor’s cassation protest and the victim’s representative’s cassation complaint, the Senate canceled the decision of the appellate court and sent the case for a new examination.

According to the indictment, on December 29, 2018, the driver hit four pedestrians at the “Dzintari Concert Hall” bus stop in Jūrmala. The court of first instance acquitted the defendant and the court of appeals left this verdict unchanged, because the driver did not foresee and should not have foreseen that pedestrians would cross the road in an unauthorized place, grossly violating the traffic rules. In addition, the court found that the place was poorly lit and the pedestrians were without light-reflecting elements.

The Senate recognized that the evidence in the case was not evaluated in accordance with the requirements of the Criminal Procedure Law. Moreover, some court opinions are contradictory. From the judgment of the court of first instance, which has been joined by the court of appeal, no clear conclusion can be drawn about the moment when the accused saw the victims.

The Senate, based on the second part of Article 128 of the Law on Criminal Procedure, stated that the court of appeal did not evaluate all the facts or information about the facts obtained during the criminal proceedings as a whole and in relation to each other. Evaluating the news as a whole means that, although reliability is an inherent feature of each individual piece of evidence, it can only be determined by looking at the relevant piece of evidence in a unified system with other pieces of evidence and assessing how their interrelationships are formed.

Senate decision. Case No. SKK-75/2024 (11520097018)

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