In the case under consideration, the question of the limits of the acceptance of a guilty plea has been raised where the injured party raises serious objections to the legal qualification of the act and the substantive jurisdiction of the court. The Constitutional Court's ruling of February 5, 2026, file no. II. ÚS 3039/24 (judge rapporteur Jan Svatoň), answers this question: even when deciding on the acceptance of a guilty plea, the court cannot avoid such objections without their actual and substantive settlement. The Constitutional Court therefore found a violation of the complainant's right to judicial protection under Art. 36(1) of the Charter, but rejected the motion to annul the contested decisions – the complainant thus retains a declaratory judgment and a claim under Act No. 82/1998 Coll.

The defendant, the complainant's stepfather, committed sexually motivated acts against the minor complainant for several years, repeatedly abusing her dependent position. Criminal prosecution was initiated for sexual abuse (Section 187) and sexual coercion (Section 186 of the Criminal Code); the prosecution took over the qualification and added the threat to the upbringing of a child (Section 201). The complainant objected from the beginning that the conduct should have been qualified as rape (Section 185), referring to the case law of the Supreme Court on the concept of defencelessness and to expert opinions proving, in her opinion, serious harm to health. The police authority and the state prosecutor's office found her objections unfounded. At the main trial, the defendant pleaded guilty, the district court accepted the plea and imposed an unconditional sentence of four years. The regional court rejected the defendant's appeal.

In the constitutional complaint, the complainant objected to the incorrect legal qualification of the act, the resulting lack of substantive jurisdiction of the district court, the faulty acceptance of the guilty plea and the disproportionate nature of the sentence imposed. The Constitutional Court partially found in her favour and identified several interrelated procedural errors. The district court “did not respond in any way to the complainant’s extensive argumentation on the legal qualification and substantive jurisdiction, particularly in the contested judgment”, although it should have responded to it “in a comprehensible and reviewable manner” (paragraph 24 of the ruling). Furthermore, before accepting the guilty plea, it did not ascertain the complainant’s position pursuant to Section 206c(3) of the Criminal Procedure Code (paragraph 25 of the ruling) and accepted the plea of ​​guilty without dealing with objections that were not manifestly unfounded, or with expert opinions whose conclusions were not fully consistent (paragraph 26 of the ruling). From this, the Constitutional Court deduced the general rule: “If the court is not able to respond convincingly to the arguments of the injured party in the proceedings for the acceptance of a guilty plea, inter alia, questioning the legal qualification of the act in question, it cannot accept the defendant’s guilty plea without further ado” (paragraph 27 of the ruling). This is a normative limit for the application of Section 206c of the Criminal Procedure Code, which affects the very admissibility of accepting a plea of ​​guilty.

Section 206c of the Criminal Procedure Code is a relatively new institution and the law does not explicitly stipulate how the court is to deal with the injured party’s objections to the legal qualification of the act in the reasoning. The ruling shows that if the court does not deal with the objections at all or if the court does not deal with them properly and substantively, this is a violation of the constitutional right to judicial protection under Article 36(1) of the Charter. This conclusion also applies in the context of a guilty plea, even though the Constitutional Court generally does not expect the same level of detail in reasoning for judgments issued after its adoption as in a fully proven case. The fact that the Constitutional Court formulated the rule in par. 27 of the ruling in general terms and in par. 34 of the ruling explicitly stated that a finding of violation of rights has “prospective significance for the prevention of similar violations of rights” indicates that the finding goes beyond the scope of an individual case and responds to a problem of a more general nature.

The use of the institution of a guilty plea is often justified not only by procedural efficiency, but also by the fact that it can in some cases reduce the risk of secondary victimization of the injured party. However, the case under consideration also shows the opposite side of this mechanism: if a guilty plea is accepted without properly addressing the injured party’s objections, it may lead not to a reduction, but on the contrary to a deepening of his procedural frustration. The injured party may thus get the impression that his argument was not truly settled in a factual and reviewable manner by the court, which he/she may perceive as further questioning of his/her own experience and claim.

The question raised by the ruling is rather practical: where exactly is the line between a “convincing” response to the injured party’s objections and a settlement that is merely apparent or insufficient? The ruling does not define this line precisely, but it does offer some guidance.

The reasoning also shows what the standard formulated by the Constitutional Court in par. 27 of the ruling does not meet. The district court stated during the main trial only that “after a short break, it reviewed the file again and, taking into account the content of the expert opinion, it will continue to hear the case itself, without submitting a proposal to the superior court for an assessment of substantive jurisdiction”. In its statement on the constitutional complaint, it then claimed that it “addressed the objections and concluded that they were unfounded”. However, the Constitutional Court stated in par. 21 of the ruling that the district court “did not respond in any way to these objections, particularly in the contested judgment”. On the contrary, par. 24 of the ruling shows what could have been done: the court should have responded to the objections “e.g. in the text of the final decision” in such a way as to actually deal with the content of the complainant’s submission, including the argumentation on the legal qualification of the act, the issue of defencelessness and the importance of expert opinions for assessing the consequences of the act. The difference between a “convincing” and a merely formal settlement apparently does not lie in the length of the reasoning, but in whether the court actually weighed the objections against the content of the file and the relevant evidence and explained why it did not find them justified.

The Constitutional Court recalls that the protection of victims’ rights must also be weighed against the rights of the accused and the requirement of legal certainty. This is precisely why the significance of the ruling of II. ÚS 3039/24 is rather procedural than “expansive”: it does not expand the position of the injured party but insists that the procedural space that the law gives him must not be merely formal. If the injured party raises relevant objections to the legal qualification or subject matter jurisdiction, the acceptance of the guilty plea does not relieve the court of the obligation to deal with them in a comprehensible and reviewable manner. The injured party's right to be heard must not remain just an empty procedural declaration in criminal proceedings.

Source: epravo.cz