Erich Rebitzer

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Erich Rebitzer (1966)

Erich Rebitzer was the victim of an Austrian miscarriage of justice in the 1950s .

Life

Erich Rebitzer lived with his divorced mother in the house of the miller Fochler and his sister in Göllersdorf in the Hollabrunn district in Lower Austria. He and his mother secretly hoped "to be able to take over the mill later, since Fochler's own son was a bachelor". The son Fochler married unexpectedly

“But a poor girl whose jealousy drove Mrs. Rebitzer and her son from the mill. On February 23, 1948, the [young] couple Fochler and their two-year-old son were found shot dead in their beds. The man's revolver was by the bed. The policeman Rath knew of Fochler's black market deals with Russians, which he had tolerated, but now directed the suspicion to Ms. Rebitzer and her son because they had a motive. Erich had somehow got the money and, believing that his mother had already confessed, to the murder in order to protect his mother. But he immediately withdrew. Shortly before the verdict, photos were found in a Viennese telephone booth that showed the murdered in a similar situation to the photos taken by the police officer Rath, but the alarm clock on the bedside table showed a different time than what had been assumed by the prosecution as the time of the murder . Erich Rebitzer was sentenced to life in spite of this , whereupon the wife of the policeman Rath committed suicide and left a letter stating that she did not want to remain an accomplice to a crime. "

Rebitzer was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1951 for alleged triple murder . He spent 17 years in the Stein bei Krems prison until Gustaf Adolf Neumann finally managed to get his release in 1966 after years of efforts. Rebitzer's request for compensation for a violation of the presumption of innocence according to Article 6, Paragraph 2 of the ECHR was officially rejected, on the grounds that he had not been able to refute the suspicion that still existed.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. Hans Martin Sutermeister . Summa Iniuria: A Pitaval of Errors of Justice . Basel: Elfenau, 1976. pp. 242-243.
  2. Der SPIEGEL reported… hunters of false judgment . In: Der Spiegel . No. 45 , 1966, pp. 198 ( online ).
  3. Effects of ECtHR judgments  ( page no longer available , search in web archivesInfo: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Art. 6 ECHR@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.cbk.at