[4][3] Sartzetakis entered the judicial career in 1955,[3] became Justice of the Peace at Kleisoura, Kastoria, and in 1963, served as judge of the Court of First Instance of Thessaloniki.

[6] In March 1964, he sent a letter to the Minister of Justice Polychronis Polychronidis in which he implicated the police and the State as responsible for the murder.

Sarzetakis and the prosecutor Pavlos Dellaportas were under intense pressure to quickly close the case without continuing the investigation.

"[6] In his memoirs, published after leaving the presidency, he stressed that Lambrakis' death was a clear political assassination with direct state involvement.

[7] The Lambrakis investigation was the theme of the 1966 novel Z by Vassilis Vassilikos, and Sartzetakis was portrayed by Jean-Louis Trintignant in the novel's 1969 film adaptation by Costas Gavras.

On 10 March 1985, immediately following the public announcement of this decision, Karamanlis resigned in the face of PASOK's unexpected rejection of his re-election and because of his opposition to Papandreou's recently announced plans to reform the 1975 Constitution and transfer the few executive powers from the President of the Republic to the Prime Minister.

[10][1] Shortly thereafter, he issued a televised message in which he called for unity, reaffirming that "our country is too small to support the luxury of national divisions".

[14] Between 1989 and 1990, he had to face an unprecedented triple electoral repetition due to the inability of the parties to form a government, mainly because to the Koskotas scandal implicating Papandreou and Papandreou's change of electoral law to prevent opposition party in gaining majority power.

[15] Faced with this situation, and heeding his appeal for a mistrial because he had murdered the man who wanted to prostitute him, the Papandreou government pardoned him, but was met with Sartzetakis' refusal to grant it.

This fact provoked a wave of indignation accusing Sartzetakis of being a homophobe and soured his relationship with Prime Minister Papandreou.

In 1986 Sartzetakis appeared in a photograph with the-admittedly large-iron cross and the staff of Athanasius the Athonite at the Great Lavra.

[20] Although he held anticommunist opinions[23] and considered the defeat of DSE in 1949 a "national victory",[24] he stressed the need for a genuine national reconciliation based on remembrance, thus disagreeing with the discontinuation of memorial services for the fallen of the Armed Forces and the taboo treatment of the subject in education.