Supreme Court refuses to suspend Jakštys’s prison sentence

Lithuania’s Supreme Court has agreed to hear former youth mentor Remigijus Jakštys’s appeal but refused to suspend his prison sentence for molesting teenagers while the case is reviewed, LRT reported.

Jakštys is asking the court to overturn an August 18 conviction by the Kaunas Regional Court and either send the case back for a new hearing or amend the ruling. The Supreme Court rejected his request to suspend the sentence pending its review, court spokeswoman Tautvilė Merkevičiūtė told the news agency ELTA on Tuesday.

In August, the Kaunas Regional Court rejected requests by two of Jakštys’s lawyers to acquit him of molesting one teenager. Police arrested him in late August and took him to a prison.

According to the case file, the offences took place from 2018 to 2020. Jakštys knew the teenagers were aged 14 or 15, and committed indecent acts against them.

Jakštys had previously been granted parole after Lithuania’s Constitutional Court ruled in June that a ban on parole for people convicted of crimes against minors’ sexual self-determination or inviolability was unconstitutional. The court said the ban also prevented those prisoners from receiving individual assessments and probation, and from being subject to parole conditions intended to reduce reoffending. Jakštys was released but was later arrested after the judgment in the molestation case took effect.