Uwłaczenie czci lub powadze Prezydenta RP w świetle praktyki Sądu Okręgowego w Krakowie (1933–1939)
Polish Penal Code of 1932; Polish President; District Court in Cracow; affronting honour or dignity of the Polish President; insulting the Polish President

Summary/Abstract: The article is an analysis of the proceedings concerning the acts of affronting the ho-nour or dignity of the Polish President which took place in the District Court in Cracow between 1933 and 1939 pursuant to Art. 125 § 2 of the Penal Code of 1932. The resources analyzed in the article include registers of penal procedures and records of particular cases from that period. According to the results of the research, there were 49 cases concerning the acts of affronting the honour or dignity of the President against 56 defendants pending in the District Court in Cracow between 1933 and 1939. They constituted merely 0.4% of all the proceedings initiated in that Court in the analyzed period. Documents concerning 24 cases have been preserved until the present day. Ultimately, out of the 50 persons whose cases were adjudicated by the District Court in Cracow in relation to the substantive issue in accordance with Art. 125 § 2, 35 defendants received non-appealable sentences, whereas 15 of them received non-appealable acquittals. Even though the punishment for affronting the honour or dignity of the President stipulated in the Penal Code was 6 months up to 5 years of imprisonment, none of the non-appealable penalties for the aforementioned of-fenders exceeded one year of imprisonment. In fact, 18 persons were sentenced to 6 months of imprisonment (the sentence was conditionally suspended in 14 of those cases), while 16 persons were sentenced to a term of imprisonment between 6 months and one year (4 of those sentences were conditionally suspended). One defendant was placed in custody and it was an instance of an extraordinary mitigation of punishment.

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