There is a ruling in the case of ¯ulczyk and the alleged insult of Andrzej Duda. The court dismissed the case

Tomasz Julian Grochowicz, judge of the District Court in Warsaw, ruled on Monday that Jakub ¯ulczyk did not commit a crime, and therefore cannot be held criminally responsible. As the judge emphasized, a crime is not an act of negligible social harm.

“The case has been discontinued, I am innocent. I would like to thank Mr. Nowiński for representing him and all of you for your support,” commented Jakub ¯ulczyk.

He referred to the ruling in social media, including constitutionalist prof. Marcin Matczak.

“The right decision of the court in the case of Jakub Żulczyk does not mean that you can insult the president. It means that you can severely criticize the authorities, because the constitutional principle of freedom of speech allows it. There is a difference between mindless insulting and harsh criticism, which Jakub Żulczyk proved before the court” – the expert said.

The fact that the Warsaw prosecutor’s office brought indictments against the writer from parish 2 Art. 135 of the Penal Code, i.e. insulting the head of state, Jakub Żulczyk informed in March 2021. The case concerned a Facebook entry relating to Andrzej Duda’s reaction to the results of the US presidential election. In November 2020, the president did not congratulate Joe Biden on his victory, but on “a successful campaign” and added that he was waiting for Biden’s nomination by the Electoral College. In response, Żulczyk wrote:

I have never heard of a “nomination by the College of Election” in the US election process. Biden won the elections. […] Everything that takes place from today – adding the rest of the votes, electoral votes – is pure formality. Joe Biden is the 46th president of the United States. Andrzej Duda is a retard.

The judgment was passed in the case of Żulczyk and Duda

In the spring of last year, Żulczyk noted that he did not find out about the details of the case from the official magazine, but from the portal wPolityce.pl. “I do not intend to act like the Warsaw prosecutor’s office and to take a position on whether the allegations are right or not. This is a matter between me and my lawyer. Whether or not I plead guilty, the court will find out first, and only then then the media, both the ordinary and the social media. The second funny thing – I am, I suspect, the first writer in this country in a very long time to be tried for what he wrote. “

According to the aforementioned article 135 of the Penal Code, insulting the head of state is punishable by up to three years in prison. . The writer himself responded earlier to “conspiracy theories” that the trial was a form of “self-promotion”:

I know who filed the denunciation, this is the information normally available to me, because the name and surname of this person appears in the transcript of the indictment sent to me (at last). But dear right-wing media and politicians, such as Mr. Krzysztof Bosak commenting on my case in the breakfast media, claiming that I did it for self-promotion […] – you can also check it, it is not a problem for you. […] The prosecution service is not a private company with a sales department that you can arrange to barter with, and the indictment of a crime is not a commercial performance.

Already during the trial itself, Żulczyk argued that the publication of the words quoted earlier was caused by the fact that he is “a Polish citizen concerned about the fate of the country, a politically conscious person” and “sometimes gives an outlet to social media”. Michał Rusinek appeared as a witness in the court and shared his opinion on the case with Internet users. We read in it, among others:

The natural element of the expression of Jakub Żulczyk – a writer – is artistic literature, therefore his column should be treated as a statement on the literary side of that border. As you can see, both definitions emphasize the satirical nature of this type of statement. Satire, on the other hand, is a genre that aims to ridicule or stigmatize the phenomena it depicts. […] It should be stated that from the philological (or more precisely: genological and semantic) point of view, the statement by Jakub Żulczyk published on Facebook has a quasi-literary character and falls within the genre of a satirical column. A genre whose poetics allows for sharper judgments and requires the audience (including those depicted in the “crooked mirror” of satire) to treat them hyperbolically, not literally.