Misdemeanor

The Greek government has opted for a mass statute of limitations for relatively minor offenses in order to deal with the backlog burdening criminal courts, which remain closed since March due to the lockdown that was implemented to contain the coronavirus pandemic.

Greece's conservative government plans to curb the activity of anarchist group Rouvikonas by introducing legislation that will reclassify certain misdemeanors as felonies.

A man was Friday given a 15-month suspended jail sentence and fined 5,000 euros by a misdemeanors court in the town of Igoumenitsa, western Greece, which found him guilty of beating a puppy for grabbing a chicken.
He was also ordered to pay for the cost of the trial. The court did not find any mitigating circumstances in the case. The dog has since found a new home.

In the wake of the controversy that followed a police operation to empty two squats in Koukaki over the weekend, State Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis said on Monday that evicted squatters who hurled blocks of concrete and other projectiles at officers should face felony rather than misdemeanor charges.

The union of Attica police's special guards said Monday that they taking legal action to change the charges brought against twenty people arrested in Saturday's operations to remove people from two squats in central Athens from a misdemeanour to a felony.

After years of preparatory work and months of deliberations and amendments, Justice Minister Mihalis Kalogirou tabled on Monday a draft bill on the reformed penal code.

The move is much anticipated by the legal community as well as inmates who expect their cases to be affected by the changes.
The reforms include the reclassification of certain felonies and misdemeanors.

Greek Bishop Amvrosios of Kalavryta was found guilty of incitement to hatred and abuse of ecclesiastical office by a three-member misdemeanor court in the Peloponnesian town of Aigio Monday, for advising followers to "spit" on gay people.

Amvrosios was handed a seven-month suspended jail sentence. The court's prosecutor had earlier proposed his acquittal.

An Athens misdemeanors court Thursday handed a two-year suspended prison sentence to Giorgos Karatzaferis, the former leader of the nationalist LAOS party, after finding him guilty of slandering Deputy Interior Minister Marina Chrysoveloni.

A leading member of self-styled anarchist group Rouvikonas received a five-month suspended sentence on Wednesday from a misdemeanors court in Athens.

A prosecutor has recommended that former Thessaloniki mayor Vassilis Papageorgopoulos and Michalis Lemousias, who served as the local authority's general secretary, should be found guilty of handling money that was illegally acquired.