On Thursday, the Capital Court of Justice upheld the decision of the first-instance court and sentenced the man who beat his father to death with a hammer in May 2020 to life imprisonment.
The court announcement cited by MTI did not name him, but the victim was the actor István Szilágyi. According to the announcement on the court’s website, the defendant, who regularly drank and was undergoing psychiatric treatment, previously had abused his father, who lived in the same house as him, on several occasions, then on May 3rd, 2020, he repeatedly hit him on the head with a hammer and stomped on the man, who died on the spot.
The defendant was sentenced to life imprisonment in the first instance for murder committed with special cruelty and to the detriment of a person whose ability to prevent the crime was limited due to his old age. At the same time, the court also ordered the execution of the previously imposed prison sentence of 2 years, suspended for 3 years. Both the defendant and his lawyer appealed against the first-instance verdict for acquittal. In its review, the sentencing panel did not find the defense – that he acted in a situation of legitimate defense – to be well-founded, because his mother clearly reported that her son jumped on his father, brutally assaulted him, hit him on the head with the hammer several times, and jumped on his chest several times.
Although the defendant was undergoing psychiatric treatment, according to the forensic psychiatrist’s expert opinion, his personality disorder did not affect his ability to be counted, they wrote. The first-instance court revealed the guiding factors during the imposition of the sentence and imposed a legal sentence by weighing them correctly. It was a significant aggravating circumstance in the case, they added, that “the act against the accused’s life was considered many times more serious”, moreover, he had previously also committed his act while serving a suspended prison sentence for abusing his father.
MTI reported on the murder on the day of the crime, the next day, on May 4th, 2020, the Chief Prosecutor of Budapest, Tibor Ibolya, gave information about the motion to arrest the man who, according to well-founded suspicion, killed a nationally recognized actor.
24.hu
Photo: MTI – Szilárd Koszticsák
