25 Years of Innocence

Tomasz Komenda was sentenced about 3 years after the crime had been committed basing on simple idea - 'find me a man and we fill forge evidences against him'. What this move does not show is that at that time Attorney General, now deceased Lech Kaczynski had been urged that a killer is found and sentenced to silence medias hysteria and coverage about brutal murder and rape of that young girl. Later when the murder was put on Tomasz, he was publicly defamed by Lech Kaczynski. Despite Mr L. Kaczynski death in Smolensk plane crash and after Tomasz was exonerated, no polish public institution nor police have never apologized Tomasz for their actions, which is a standard practice in western democratic countries.

Not much changed in post-soviet bloc however after 1990 in terms of judiciary mentality. Human Rights Watch estimates that 1-3% of sentences in Poland may be those in which innocent people are sentenced just because either suspects were threatened by police to force to confess by beatings. No effective police control and their procedures exists as of today. You may call it a mafia or not but I believe it's not far from truth in Poland.

Personally I believe his family did not do enough to get him out of prison, a good lawyer would smash the case easily and he is worth every money, why did it happen 15 years later is a mystery for me.

As Tomasz said after his release, there are no good people in prisons , there is only evil.