Between "Backwardness" and "Habitual Criminals". Invoking "Gypsyness" at Courts in Interwar Czechoslovakia
Abstract
In June 1929 the Regional Court in Košice delivered a verdict for nineteen Roma from Moldava nad Bodvou who were accused of committing around 80 offences on the territory of East Slovakia between 1920 and 1927. An important mitigating circumstance stated by the jury in the judgement constituted "inclination of Gypsy race to commit crimes, their repudiated position in society and in consequence their defiance".
These formulations came from expert's (medical) opinion on the accused. The author, a Czech physician and director of the Department for Insane Persons at the State Hospital in Košice, confirmed the sanity of the accused and but at the same time presented them as "backward degenerates".
In November 1931 the Regional Court in Uherské Hradiště (Moravia) sentenced Tomáš Daniel, Roma living in a village in the vicinity of Uherské Hradiště who was labelled as "habitual criminal", to prison for eight months for robbery. According to the court, the key evidence constituted testimony of one witness who stated that when he entered the crimes scene, he "smelled the Gypsy odor".
These are two blatant examples show that "Gypsyness" as a specific form of otherness entered the court rooms in interwar Czechoslovakia. But at the same time, they also attest to the fact that "Gypsyness" could play completely different roles: mitigating circumstance on one hand or crucial fact that helped foster the evidence on the other.
In my presentation, I will firstly deal with the image of "Gypsies" in Czechoslovak criminology and contemporary press. Secondly, I will focus on the practices by the means of which "Gypsyness" entered the judiciary.
And finally, I will outline the differences between Czech Lands and Slovakia and present examples of varying agency of those inhabitants who were labelled as "Gypsies" at courts in Czechoslovakia.