Wiesław Wiszniewski, whose name is written Wieslaw Wiszniewski without Polish diacritics, was sentenced to life imprisonment in Poland for murder. Eight of the elderly women he attacked died. The Regional Court in Warsaw, the Sąd Okręgowy w Warszawie, gave judgment in his case on November 22, 2001. It did more than impose the most severe penalty Polish law then allowed. It also set a stricter condition for parole than the Penal Code applies to life prisoners as a rule: he may be considered for conditional early release only after serving at least 30 years, which places his first possible release on March 5, 2029.
He was born on May 15, 1971, in Dunajek, a village in Poland. The names of the women who died, their ages, the dates of their deaths and the number of murder counts on which he was convicted are not on record.
Wiszniewski came from a working-class family. His parents raised him in a full household with many children, and he was the youngest of the brothers. He has said that his father beat him often and that at home he was the only one who was hit. He has also said that he holds no grudge against his father, and by 2011 he had no news of him.
He finished only primary school. His trade was carpentry, for which he trained. He never married and has no children.
His first theft, by his own account, came in his second year of primary school, when he was nine years old: he took albums of postage stamps. The murder case was not his first criminal sentence. Before it, he had served time in prison for burglaries. The courts, dates and terms of those earlier sentences are not on record.
The case was tried before the Regional Court in Warsaw. Its judgment of November 22, 2001, convicted Wiszniewski of murder, in Polish zabójstwo, and sentenced him to life imprisonment.
The court then used a power that Polish law reserves for especially justified cases. It ruled that he could not apply for conditional early release until he had served a minimum of 30 years of the sentence. Under that ruling, the earliest date on which he can be released on parole is March 5, 2029.
Whether a defense appeal was lodged against the judgment, and how any appeal ended, is not on record. The names and sentences of any co-defendants are also not on record.
By early 2011, at the age of 40, Wiszniewski had worked for four years in the prison laundry, a paid job of five hours a day, and he made small items such as boxes. He said he tried not to think at all, kept to his own occupations and let the time pass. He said he trusted no one in prison and had no friends there.
He did not expect to be freed. Asked about his chances, he answered that release was rather unlikely, and that he honestly did not know whether there was any point in waiting: what would be, would be. He said he did not believe in God or in any life after death, and he described himself in harsh terms as a killer.
He also gave his own view of the judgment. He said he treated the sentence not as a punishment but as elimination from society. Asked whether the verdict was right and whether it was fair, he gave the same answer to both questions: "Certainly." He asked that people forget him, and he declined to be photographed.
Wiszniewski was sentenced under the Penal Code of June 6, 1997, published in the Journal of Laws (Dziennik Ustaw) of 1997 as No. 88, item 553. The companion act passed the same day, the Introductory Provisions to the Penal Code, set its date of entry into force: September 1, 1998.
The 1997 code listed five penalties: a fine, restriction of liberty, deprivation of liberty, 25 years' deprivation of liberty, and life deprivation of liberty. The death penalty was not among them. Executions in Poland had been suspended by a five-year moratorium introduced in 1995, and the new code abolished capital punishment entirely, in effect replacing it with life imprisonment. The Introductory Provisions made that replacement explicit for older law: where a retained penal provision still prescribed death, courts were to impose life imprisonment instead, and the same substitution applied to death sentences already passed but not carried out.
Parole for long sentences was governed by Article 78, section 3, of the code. A prisoner serving 25 years could be conditionally released after 15. A prisoner serving life could be conditionally released after 25. Article 77, section 1, set the test for any release: the court could free a prisoner early only when his attitude, personal characteristics and circumstances, his way of life before the crime, the circumstances of the crime, and his conduct after it and in prison justified the belief that he would obey the law after release, and in particular would not offend again.
Article 77, section 2, gave the sentencing court a further power. In especially justified cases, a court imposing a sentence of imprisonment could set stricter limits on a prisoner's access to conditional release than those laid down in Article 78. As Polish law stood in 2011, that power allowed a court to name a longer threshold for a life prisoner, for example 30 years, but it did not allow the court to remove the possibility of parole altogether. The Regional Court in Warsaw used exactly that power in Wiszniewski's case, setting the threshold at 30 years in place of the statutory 25.
Polish criminologists define serial homicide as killing committed by the same offender at least twice, at intervals of time. They count at least 29 such offenders in Poland between 1989 and 2019, and Wiszniewski is counted among the possible cases. They regard the figure as incomplete, in part because labor emigration grew after Poland joined the European Union and some killings by Polish citizens took place abroad.
By 2022, life imprisonment had become the usual sentence for serial killers in Polish courts. Judges tend to treat two or more killings as evidence that an offender cannot be reformed, and they set the penalty accordingly.
In February 2011, Wiszniewski was serving his life sentence in a Polish prison. The judgment of November 22, 2001, makes March 5, 2029, the first date on which he can be considered for conditional early release. Release on that date is not automatic. A court would have to find, under the test of Article 77, section 1, that his conduct and circumstances justify the belief that he would obey the law once free.
May 15, 1971: Wiesław Wiszniewski is born in Dunajek, Poland.
Before the murder case: serves prison time for burglaries.
1995: a five-year moratorium on executions is introduced in Poland.
June 6, 1997: the new Penal Code and its Introductory Provisions are enacted.
September 1, 1998: the 1997 Penal Code enters into force, with no death penalty and with parole for life prisoners after 25 years.
November 22, 2001: the Regional Court in Warsaw convicts Wiszniewski of murder and sentences him to life imprisonment, with conditional release barred until at least 30 years have been served.
Early 2011: at 40, he is serving his sentence in Poland and working in the prison laundry.
March 5, 2029: the earliest date on which he can be considered for conditional early release.