Today’s verdict is not valid as both sides can appeal it. Photo: Freepik.
Prague, Feb 17 (CTK) – The Prague Metropolitan Court today imposed 12 years in prison and impatient treatment on adult student Jaroslav Rehak for having murdered a 74-year-old teacher with a machete in a vocational school in Prague last spring.
The young man, who was 19 when committing the crime, confessed to the murder. He testified in court last December that the teacher had humiliated him when examining him and bullied him.
Today’s verdict is not valid as both sides can appeal it.
Rehak was charged with premeditated murder, for which he faced 12 to 20 years in prison.
However, public prosecutor Jana Murinova proposed that the act be re-qualified as the murder was committed in a very brutal way, so he would face 15 to 20 years in prison or even exceptional sentence. It ranges from 20 to 30 years, or even life imprisonment in the Czech Republic.
The court met her proposal for a stricter qualification of the crime, but imposed a prison term below the legal penalty level.
“It is proven that the defendant committed the act in the state of lower sanity,” court panel chairman Tome Frankic said, explaining the reason for a lower prison term.
According to expert opinions, Rehak had considerably lowered self-control ability when committing the murder, but his cognitive functions were preserved.
The court took also other mitigating circumstances into consideration.
Rehak’s defence counsel demanded that his client be convicted of killing, that he committed homicide in a strong agitation caused by various circumstances. However, the court panel chairman did not accept the defence arguments.
Rehak apologised for his act in court today. He did not know what he was doing and what consequences it would have as he was psychologically collapsed then, he added.
The youth attacked the teacher with a machete in his office on the fourth floor of the school building in Prague’s Ohradni street on March 31, 2022. The teacher succumbed to the fatal wounds on the spot, with medical rescuers being no longer able to save him. The assailant ran away from the scene of the crime and the police arrested him in Dolni Brezany, west of Prague, later.
A day before the murder, the teacher gave the young man the lowest mark in communication technology so he failed in this school subject. This along with the long bad relationship between him and the teacher escalated the feeling of wrong and frustration in the perpetrator, according to the public prosecutor.
