Some distance later, the smuggler asked Szűcs to give him his gun. A few minutes later, soldiers from the ÁVÓ placed both of them in custody. It turned out that the smuggler was an AVO agent and that the entire escape had been a trap. Once arrested, an added complication for Szűcs was that he played for Ujpest, now named Budapesti Dózsa, which was controlled by the police. As a player for the team, he was a commissioned lieutenant in the police and was carrying his service weapon during the attempt. This made him subject to an anti-defection law that called for life imprisonment or the death penalty for members of any armed service caught defecting. He and Kovács were held for months before trial. Szűcs was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging. His former teammates Ferenc Puskás and József Bozsik attempted to intervene on his behalf without success. On 4 June 1951, Szűcs was executed. The trial was held in secret and, officially, nobody knew about the execution until the political changes in the country in 1989. Additionally, the location of his grave was strictly confidential. After the communist regime's fall, Szűcs' story was widely published. In 1989 the death sentence was revoked and declared a violation of the law. In 1991, he was posthumously named a police lieutenant-colonel. Since 1993, an elementary school was named after him in Újpest, while a football tournament for youth players of the district is held every year. The stand of Újpest FC's Ferenc Szusza Stadium where home team supporters sit has been named after him. A documentary movie was filmed on his story in 2005.