The Federal Court of Justice (BGH) has the judgment of the regional court Traunstein Against a young man because of murder at the medical student Hanna. The Karlsruhe judges decided that the case has to be renegotiated, as the BGH now announced. The “Süddeutsche Zeitung” had first reported about it.
The Traunstein District Court had sentenced the 23-year-old in March last year to a youth penalty of nine years for dangerous bodily harm and murder.
According to the chamber, the then 20-year-old had attacked the medical student in the early morning of October 3, 2022 on her way home from the club “ice basement” in Aschau in the Chiemgau from sexual motifs from behind and then thrown into a nearby stream.
Doubts about the guilt: Defense went into revision
The defense made a revision. Even after more than 30 days of negotiations, she saw no evidence of her client’s guilt and had pleaded for acquittal. The lawyers – the compulsory defenders Harald Baumgärtl and Markus Frank and the lawyer Regina Rick – had not excluded the opportunity, for example, that the young woman, who had about two per thousand alcohol in her blood, plunged into the stream without strangers.
Secretly email change arouses doubts about impartiality
The BGH’s Senate now justifies its decision with a procedural error that the defense had also complained about in the process. The BGH decided that the chairwoman of the youth chamber should no longer have participated in the judgment. At the beginning of January 2024, the judge had exchanged information about the legal assessment of knowledge from the trial in emails with the prosecutor, but left the defense into ignorance.
The defense only experienced this more than a month later; argued the BGH. At that time, the defense submitted a request for bias, which was rejected. This did not withstand the review by the Karlsruhe Senate. “With the secret approach, the accused could have the impression that the chairman no longer behaved impartially towards him,” the BGH now said.
Other chamber now has to negotiate
Now another youth chamber of the Traunstein Regional Court has to negotiate the case again. When a new procedure could start was initially open.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 250416-930-445621/1
