A Hungarian judge presiding over the case of an Irish man charged with the manslaughter of a female American tourist in Budapest in November 2024 has adjourned the trial until 7 July.<\/p>\n
The latest trial hearing took place today at the Metropolitan Court of Budapest.<\/p>\n
Mackenzie Michalski, a 31-year-old nurse from the United States, was visiting Budapest and went missing on 4 November 2024.<\/p>\n
Police arrested a 38-year-old Irish male suspect three days later.<\/p>\n
The accused Irish man who cannot be named under Hungarian law has been held in police custody for the past 19 months, initially while police completed a 12-month investigation into the cause of Ms Michalski’s death.<\/p>\n
Last November, Budapest’s Metropolitan Prosecutor’s Office charged the accused with manslaughter, referred to as ‘basic homicide’ in Hungarian law, which means that no premeditation was involved.<\/p>\n
The trial began in April this year.<\/p>\n
The accused maintains that Ms Michalski’s death was accidental.<\/p>\n
Closing arguments from both the prosecution and the defence were expected to take place today but only the prosecution delivered its closing argument.<\/p>\n
Defence lawyer, Dr Gy\u00f6rgy Magyar, asked to deliver his closing arguments on behalf of the accused at the next trial hearing.<\/p>\n
The judge, Dr Fed\u00e9r Szabolcs, subsequently adjourned proceedings early and set 7 July as the next hearing date.<\/p>\n
It is expected that the judge will deliver a verdict in the case on 7 July.<\/p>\n
Ms Michalski’s parents and brother travelled from the US to attend today’s court hearing.<\/p>\n
According to the indictment, the defendant met Ms Michalski in a Budapest nightclub on the evening of 4 November 2024.<\/p>\n
They had drinks at a bar and danced together and later went to the man’s rented apartment in the city where the accused is alleged to have assaulted and strangled the woman during sexual intercourse.<\/p>\n
After the victim’s death, the accused told police that he cleaned the apartment, then bought a large suitcase in which he put the woman’s body.<\/p>\n
He then rented a car and drove with the suitcase to a wooded area near Lake Balaton, a two-hour drive south-west of Budapest and hid Ms Michalski’s body.<\/p>\n
In her closing argument, prosecution lawyer Dr M\u00e1rta Dar\u00f3ci said that Ms Michalski’s death was a case of ‘dolus eventualis’, a legal principle used to describe indirect intent but where the accused is aware of the consequences of his actions.<\/p>\n
Dr Dar\u00f3ci requested a prison sentence of more than 10 years.<\/p>\n
In Hungary, the crime of manslaughter is punishable with a prison sentence of five to 15 years.<\/p>\n
During today\u2019s hearing, Dr Gy\u00f6rgy, the defence lawyer, requested that the court conduct a psychological evaluation of the deceased victim, which the judge refused.<\/p>\n
Requests for bail from the defence during pre-trial hearings and the trial itself have been denied by the court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Hungarian judge presiding over the case of an Irish man charged with the manslaughter of a female…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":409891,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-509048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=509048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509048\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/409891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=509048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=509048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=509048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}