Here is a detailed analysis of this court decision:
1. The subject of the dispute is the determination of the correct procedure for sentencing for a combination of criminal offenses, where some were committed before and some after the pronouncement of a previous judgment, particularly in cases of “interrupted” recidivism of identical crimes.
2. The Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court departed from the legal conclusions of the Joint Chamber of the Criminal Cassation Court, which previously provided for the non-application of the rules of Part 4 of Article 70 of the Criminal Code to identical offenses. The Court emphasized that the legislature did not provide for exceptions to the rules of sentencing depending on whether the offenses are identical, homogeneous, or heterogeneous. The key criterion for the application of Part 4 of Article 70 of the Criminal Code is exclusively the temporal factor—the commission of a crime before the pronouncement of a previous judgment. The Grand Chamber established a clear step-by-step mechanism for sentencing: first for each offense separately, then for the combination of offenses committed before the judgment, followed by the application of Part 4 of Article 70 of the Criminal Code, then for the combination of offenses committed after the judgment, and finally for the combination of judgments under Article 71 of the Criminal Code. This approach ensures compliance with the principles of individualization of punishment and legal certainty. Furthermore, the Court found the prosecutor’s arguments regarding the expiration of the statute of limitations for liability under Part 1 of Article 353 of the Criminal Code to be well-founded, which required amending the court decisions in this part.
3. The Court partially granted the convicted person’s cassation appeal and fully granted the prosecutor’s appeal, amending the court decisions regarding the imposition of the final sentence and exempting the convicted person from punishment under Part 1 of Article 353 of the Criminal Code due to the expiration of the statute of limitations.
