Murderer Kramný loses at Supreme Administrative Court: court rejects his challenge to key expert report
Petr Kramný, convicted of murdering his wife and daughter, has been unsuccessful in his cassation complaint at the Supreme Administrative Court. He contested the credentials of the expert institute that produced the supplementary report.
Supreme Administrative Court rejects Kramný's complaint against expert report from České Budějovice
Petr Kramný, who is serving 28 years in prison for the murder of his wife and daughter, has suffered another legal setback. The Supreme Administrative Court (Supreme Administrative Court) rejected his cassation complaint, in which he challenged the expert credentials of České Budějovice Hospital — an institution that produced a key supplementary report in his criminal case. Czech News reported this.
According to the final judgment, Kramný murdered his wife and daughter with electric current in an Egyptian hotel in 2013. The court found that this was a solution to long-standing family disputes. In 2016 he was convicted on the basis of indirect evidence, denying guilt from the outset. The judgment was subsequently upheld by both the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court.
Complaint filed a decade late
With a gap of ten years, Kramný turned to the Municipal Court in Prague with an action suit against the Ministry of Justice. He claimed that the ministry had unlawfully granted the hospital the status of an expert institute, arguing that it did not meet the legal requirements. The Municipal Court rejected the complaint — finding it belated and Kramný as not having the authority to file it.
The Supreme Administrative Court confirmed this conclusion. "In the matter now being examined, the municipal court correctly reasoned that the complainant clearly lacks the authority to file an action suit, since the alleged infringements were not directed against him nor did he suffer direct harm as a consequence thereof," states the Supreme Administrative Court judgment.
The court also emphasised that Kramný should have raised objections to the expert report during the criminal proceedings, not by way of an administrative suit. The expert institute did not act as an administrative body when producing the report. "The very conduct and assessment of this evidence in the criminal proceedings is then a matter for the criminal court, which decides on guilt or innocence on the basis of the evidence presented in accordance with the principle of free assessment of evidence," the judgment states.
Conflicting reports and dispute over hospital credentials
The case has been accompanied from the outset by a clash of expert findings. Judicial experts from the Ostrava Institute of Forensic Medicine, after autopsies of the victims' bodies, concluded that death was caused by electric current. A report commissioned by the defence, on the other hand, identified poisoning as the most probable cause of death. The court therefore ordered a supplementary report to be drawn up — this report sided with the version of electric current and became a key basis for conviction.
The Šalamoun Association, which has been following Kramný's case for a long time and acting in his favour, has repeatedly claimed that České Budějovice Hospital never properly became an expert institute and was not authorised to issue reports in criminal matters. The hospital rejected the accusation in 2020 and maintained that it met all legal requirements. In 2022 it ceased expert activities — the hospital's management justified this by the retirement of the head of the forensic medicine department, František Vorel.
Kramný has repeatedly sought a retrial, without success so far. Last year, the European Court of Human Rights also rejected his complaint.
Source: České noviny