Obowiązek wykonania rozkazu i niewykonanie rozkazu oraz ich prawnokarne konsekwencje

Abstrakt

The refugee crisis on the Polish-Belarusian border related to the appearance on the border of a significant number of people who were brought to the territory of Belarus and then directed to the territory of Poland in an organized manner by Belarusian services led to a number of actions by, among others, Polish authorities, the legal aspects of which required urgent elaboration. This article addresses the issue of the obligation to obey an order and failure to obey an order and their criminal law consequences. The Polish legislator based the responsibility for carrying out an order with criminal content on the principle of “thinking bayonets.” Thus, a service representative cannot be completely unreflective of his superior’s orders. He is entitled to verify the legality of the orders addressed to him and may refrain from carrying them out when they contradict the law. However, the systemic hierarchical nature of subordination cannot fully displace individual criminal or disciplinary responsibility. It should be recognized that in cases that are most obvious from the factual side, the behavior of officers in the execution of an order (taking sick, wounded, or women with children to the forest in the cold without providing them with any adequate medical-survival assistance) must raise doubts in every officer about the legality of the order. In such cases, there is no room for excuses for error regarding the potential legal evaluation of such acts.