Jakštys asks Lithuania’s Supreme Court to overturn conviction

Remigijus Jakštys, who is serving a prison sentence for molesting teenagers, has appealed to Lithuania’s Supreme Court, asking it to suspend enforcement of his sentence and overturn his conviction, LRT reported.

In his appeal, Jakštys is seeking a retrial or a change to the ruling issued by the appellate court on Aug. 18, Supreme Court spokeswoman Tautvilė Merkevičiūtė told the ELTA news agency on Friday.

Police detained Jakštys in late August and took him to prison. That month, the Kaunas Regional Court rejected his lawyers’ requests to acquit him over the molestation of one teenager and to delay his prison sentence.

According to the case file, Jakštys committed the offences between 2018 and 2020, knowing that the victims were 14 or 15 years old. The court ordered him to pay 8,000 euros to three victims. Judges said the victim’s testimony was consistent and supported by other evidence in the case.

After correcting a procedural error made by the lower court, the appellate court reduced Jakštys’s sentence from four years and three months to three years and eight months. It is not clear how much time he will serve. Under current law, he may be eligible for conditional release.

In June, Lithuania’s Constitutional Court ruled that a legal provision barring conditional release for people convicted of offences against minors’ sexual freedom or inviolability was unconstitutional. The court said the ban also prevented those prisoners from receiving individual assessments, being placed on probation or following release conditions intended to reduce reoffending.

LRT reported that Jakštys and his lawyers brought the case to the Constitutional Court. The article also described him as the first person convicted of a sexual offence to have conditional release applied to him.