"Not like Hooligans or something?" A Day in the Life of Dr. Lajos Korona

It is always interesting to be let in to see a day in the life of someone else who leads a completely different life than you. This past wednesday, the JSBP Crew got a chance to see what it is like to be a prosecutor in the Public Prosecutor's Office in Budapest. Dr. Korona serves as a public prosecutor in the Supervision of Investigations department. Here he works on police investigations. If the police want to conduct an investigation, they must initiate it. There is a timeline set by the prosecutor and the police must have a file sent in to the office within 2 months, in most cases, laying out what they have done, what they have collected and what they plan to do. They map out evidence and where they plan to find it. The point of this is for the investigating prosecutor to read information about the case and check in on how investigations are going. He then decides if the investigation seems alright and if he agrees with the police he sends back the file approving the investigation. If there seems to be something wrong with their investigation, the prosecutor can point out these faults and assign further tasks that must be completed within the investigation to make sure it is up to standards.

One thing that particularly threw me off in the beginning was what the exact role of these public prosecutors is. In America, you have the right to a lawyer, whether it is a public defender or a private one, when you go to trial. That is who you are working with and who is overseeing the case. In the Hungarian court system, you also have the right to a lawyer to be with you in your trial, but there is this additional public prosecutor working on the case behind the scenes as well. This is not something happening in every case in America. The job of the public prosecutor in Hungary is to make sure that everything being done is in compliance with legal standards of the justice system and that police officers are acting accordingly to to the law. This is done behind the scenes. A different prosecutor will be involved with the same case, but he will be accompanying the person to trial.

We'll make sure this doesn't happen to you.

Another thing I found to be very interesting is that depending on the part of Hungary you are in the ruling on the sentence will be different. For example, in the northeast region of Hungary the sentencing in much more severe than in the capital area here in Budapest. This fascinated me because I would think it would be the opposite way- I would expect the most crime and the worst crime to be here in the busiest part of the country with the most action. I wonder if the reason this is the case is because of the other populations in Hungary in that part of the country? And they pose to be more dangerous or enforcement wants to keep them locked up longer? I am interested to possibly know more about why this is the case. I was also interested to know that in comparing the Hungarian system to neighboring countries systems, you will find that the prosecutor is much more involved making privacy very difficult. Whereas in Hungary, the system does not keep everything as close offering more privacy to those involved in the case.

My last thought addresses the one thing that I found to be the most interesting thought to take away from the entire lecture. Dr. Korona said something along the lines of explaining that you can never compare two sentences because they are always different from one to the next. There are different judges, different systems, different cases that you may not be able to see and many other small things that must be taken into considering resulting in different rulings. I thought this to be something that is common among most court systems practicing everywhere. You can never compare one case to another and assume the same ruling will be made. Every case is different and deserves its own attention. That brings up the concern I had earlier from Dr. Hack's talk, when he explained how the judges' learn the case ahead of time. That concerns me because I feel that could introduce a sort of generic trend when the judge is just repetitively reading cases and possibly relating them to one another and a certain bias gets formed for every case that is similar. I know from experience that when something horrific happens, all the people involved want to see justice brought to table and that means the case gets all the attention necessary to come to a ruling that seems to fit appropriately. It is important to give every case a chance in teaching something new and finding the ruling that fits personally to that case.

I enjoyed this talk a lot and I found Dr. Korona to be extremely passionate about his job and I felt it was easy to see that he is very proud of what he does and he really enjoys it. Finding that happiness in your job is the best thing anyone could ask for in their work.