However, two of the previous trials never ended with a verdict.
The indictment had been brought in 2017 at the district court of Neuburg: The judge there had considered a sentence of more than four years in prison for the accused possible, if all allegations are true and therefore referred the matter to the district court. The process, scheduled for several days of negotiation, started there in September 2018 – and burst on the second day: A Schffe had looked at files while inspecting files and read a message. Since then, the indictment has been sluggish and has been retried since Wednesday. This time there are nine trial days before the 1st criminal chamber, with judge Konrad Kiegl already announced that six would have to be enough.
But not if it continues at the same pace as on the first day, when several witnesses were dumped by the chairman for reasons of time. Because: The defenders of the accused, Florian Englert and Klaus Wittmann (Levelingstrae) tried to slow down the process with the identical requests from 2018. Before the indictment was read out, Englert demanded that the public prosecutor’s office rework the brief. The Schrobenhausen attorney assessed the charge as too vague, and the allegation of the client’s alleged modus operandi was not described in detail.
After lengthy deliberation, the criminal division rejected the application as unfounded – as did that of co-defense attorney Wittmann, stating that the criminal division was under-staffed with two full-time judges and two deputies in view of the charges and the extensive proceedings.
During the course of the day of the negotiation, Wittmann then reversed the strategy and challenged jurisdiction: In his view, the matter had been indicted at the local court, so that it could be negotiated there and the trial at the regional court suspended. But here, too, he failed because of the regional court vice Kiegl.
For a good quarter of an hour, prosecutor Eser finally presented the individual allegations from the indictment: 85 times between 2012 and 2015, the 54-year-old is said to have emptied the cash registers of petrol machines in Schrobenhausen, Aichach and Reichertshofen, but instead of delivering the money to the company have kept to themselves. The man had been employed by a gas station company in the southern district of Neuburg-Schrobenhausen since 2005.
The company has tackled the criminal case through so-called adhesion proceedings and wants to enforce its civil law claims against the accused: the allegedly misappropriated amount of money totaling 299,005 euros plus interest.
The 54-year-old said nothing to the court about the allegations – as he had done two years ago at the first trial. Earlier, he had given the police extensive information about the allegations and rejected them. Witnesses were heard in the afternoon, including the technical manager of the company that manufactured the petrol station machines. He explained how they work. The trial is scheduled to continue on November 18th. DK
–
