ALSFELD / GÜßEN (akr). Many rejected questions, an interruption in negotiations, incomprehension and only one of three pleadings: The trial of the alleged murder in the Alsfeld Beerenwiese turned out to be more difficult this Friday than on the previous days of the negotiations. Nevertheless, an important question could be clarified – namely that of the culpability of the accused.
“We’re not assigning the blame to witnesses here,” emphasized judge Regine Enders-Kunze when, just a few seconds earlier, the attorney for the private prosecution, Ralf Kuhn, said something to a witness that caused a lack of understanding in the entire courtroom. But first go back a few minutes. It was the penultimate day of the trial that was on the program that Friday in the trial of the murder in the Beerenwiese allotment garden in Alsfeld. On this day, among other things, a final testimony, the report of an expert and the pleadings were planned.
First, the former chairman of the allotment garden association took a seat on the witness stand. Actually, he should have testified the previous day of the trial, but the summons was sent to his former home address, so it did not reach him. Now he was there and ready to present his view of things. He had a good relationship with both the victim and the accused. “I was able to speak well to everyone,” he said. Leszek M. was a friendly and helpful man, and so was the defendant. “You couldn’t say anything negative about him,” he reports.
The former chairman was not there on the day of the incident. He described the day when the defendant is said to have thrown stones through the hedge and later the fight broke out – a prehistory of the fatal argument that had previously been the subject of the trial. Leszek came to him with a stone in hand and informed him of the incident. “You noticed the heated atmosphere,” he said. He then talked to the defendant that he was supposed to have been drunk at the time, he did not notice. When B. saw M. at his garden a short time later, he rushed at him. The victim’s son-in-law described the situation as follows: “He wanted to hit my father-in-law like a beast.”
Just a few days after the incident, the association’s board met to discuss the consequences. It was decided not to throw Ali B. out of the club, but to warn him, reports the witness. The accused also wanted to apologize to the victim, but M. “tragically refused”.
Questions, questions and more questions
Then the lawyer Ralf Kuhn, who represents the widow of the victim as a joint plaintiff in the trial, began to ask the witness a few questions. Questions that, to put it simply, had nothing to do with guilt or anything like that. Among other things, Kuhn wanted to know whether he would have accepted the defendant in his club if he had known about the criminal record.
“We are not discussing the statutes of the allotment garden association”, emphasized judge Enders-Kunze. But Kuhn continued to ask these kinds of questions that the judge kept rejecting. In his opinion there is “a responsibility of the witness to the death of the victim”. This statement caused a lack of understanding in the entire courtroom. “We’re not blaming witnesses here,” emphasized the judge. However, when Kuhn said that he was of the opinion that “the witness had limited perception”, the judge interrupted the hearing.
But even after the interruption, Kuhn continued to ask questions that were repeatedly rejected – for example, why the witness was no longer the chairman of the association and whether after the fact he would still be of the opinion that the defendant was “capable of integration.” People “act. The witness emphasized that he was shocked by the crime. He got along well with both of them and got to know Ali B. as a helpful, friendly and hardworking person. “As crazy as that sounds, but it just is,” he said.
About the culpability of the accused
On this day, however, not only the last testimony was on the program, but also the psychological report of the expert. In this he first gave the biography of the accused, reported on his childhood and the suicide attempts that should have occurred. In Germany, B. had received psychological treatment three times, where he was diagnosed with a depressive disorder with pseudo-hallucinations, an impulse control disorder and a depression with “delusional content”.
The expert could not determine these diseases, as he explained in detail. “I cannot make any psychiatric diagnosis for the day of the incident.” It was a neighborhood dispute that escalated that day. For him the defendant was fully guilty and B. was by no means restricted in his opinion. According to the expert opinion, the accused was sane. At the beginning of the trial, B. himself had claimed to have been “not normal” and “not with himself” when he hit Leskez M. with a hammer. The expert also stated that the drugs that were discontinued had nothing to do with the crime.
After the expert had to ask some of Kuhn’s questions – and that although one might actually have thought that the lawyer should be satisfied with this report, after all, the defendant was certified as fully guilty if the pleadings were supposed to follow. Both public prosecutor Thomas Hauburger and defense attorney Ralf Alexander Becker would have been ready for it. But not Kuhn. He didn’t want to make a plea that day. He wanted to prepare, he said. In addition, he intends to submit an application so that the criminal record of the accused can be determined again. He wanted to “play it safe” that the chamber would speak out in favor of the particular gravity of the guilt.
Prosecutor calls for life imprisonment and special severity of guilt
Hauburger already did that on Friday. He was the only one who pleaded. Becker had felt ready, but decided against it. At the beginning of his plea, Hauburger quoted the deceased’s son: “Taking someone away for no reason, I can’t understand that.” He sees it the same way. “I can’t understand what happened there, but we have to make it understandable,” emphasized Hauburger. The defendant felt disregarded by M., misunderstood the insult “Kurwa” and this misunderstanding had massive consequences in April 2020: The defendant hit him with a 1.2 kilogram hammer after he slipped him sideways approached him from behind, several times massively, so that M. died of serious injuries at the scene of the accident.
Hauburger said he had never seen a skull like this in his entire career. He could hardly imagine how the deceased’s widow fared at that moment when she found her husband like this. The fact that M. had to die because B. misunderstood a swear word is simply barely understandable for him. For him it is a classic treacherous murder, which must be punished by law alone with a life sentence. Hauburger also dealt intensively with the question of the particular gravity of the guilt. If one speaks of the particular gravity of the guilt, then one can only be released after 15 years in prison in certain exceptional cases.
There were some moments that spoke for the defendant. For example, that he confessed completely from the start and apologized to the victims in a letter. “I also have no doubt that they regret the act,” said Hauburger. But are these points enough? Asked the prosecutor. At first he thought it would, but then he came to the conclusion that it was not enough – and that too had very specific reasons. According to Hauburger, this includes this “extreme disparity between cause and act”. Say: That the accused reacted like this on that day. “You can’t understand it, they were just rejected,” emphasized the prosecutor.
As a further point, he noted that the act took place in public – in front of witnesses. And despite requests to stop, he continued to hit the victim. In the meantime he went over to his garden and returned to M., continued to hit with the 1.2 kilogram hammer. “They made the victim an object of their anger,” emphasized Hauburger and demanded a life sentence for murder with the particular severity of guilt and the order that he should continue his prison term. The latter simply means that the accused remains in custody until the verdict is final.
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