Legal errors around Adolf S. and Bernhard M.

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The judicial errors surrounding Adolf S. and Bernhard M. led in 1995 in two independent criminal proceedings to convictions of the driver Adolf S. and his brother-in-law Bernhard M., who were convicted by S. ' Daughter had been falsely accused of rape . Both served their long term in prison and were later acquitted in retrial .

Accusations and convictions

In 1994 the then 18-year-old student Amelie (name changed by journalists and book authors) accused her father Adolf S. of raping her a total of ten times in the past six years. He also attempted an abortion on her with a clothes hanger . She later expanded her allegations to include her uncle Bernhard M., whom she accused of quadruple rape. S. was arrested and sentenced to seven years imprisonment by the Osnabrück district court in 1995 after three days of the trial.

As part of the first trial against Bernhard M. there was, among other things, an inspection appointment that showed that Amelie alleged rape in a Toyota Corolla was impossible due to the size of those involved. The judge thereupon promised M.'s defense lawyer that M. could expect a suspended sentence if he would at least confess to other rapes. After his lawyer recommended Bernhard M. to go into this, he withdrew his trust. The change of lawyer resulted in a new main hearing in which exonerating circumstances from the first hearing were no longer considered, although the same judges and prosecutors were involved. At the end of this trial, Bernhard M. was sentenced to four and a half years in prison.

Both judgments were only made on the basis of Amelie's statements, and with the same personal table. The Federal Court of Justice rejected the appeal in both cases . In 1999, Bernhard M.'s application for readmission was unsuccessful.

Amelie, who was treated as an inpatient, suffered from a personality disorder of the borderline type, which was denied by her treating psychiatrist in the process in order not to make her statements appear implausible. After a violent argument with her sometimes violent father, she moved in with her grandparents. Later she was admitted to adolescent psychiatry after attempting suicide because of lovesickness. There she inflicted wounds with broken glass and other objects, took pills at random, wrote farewell letters and made further suicide attempts. After several stays in psychiatry and detoxification treatments, she finally moved to an assisted living facility .

Readmissions and acquittals

After father and uncle had fully served their imprisonment, a turning point came in 2002, when court reporter Sabine Rückert published the results of her research during the period and found a twofold miscarriage of justice . Rückert became aware of the case in 2001 through a tip from forensic doctor Bernd Brinkmann , who was convinced of the innocence of the two convicts. She researched the case and turned to criminal defense lawyer Johann Schwenn , who wrote a 300-page request for retrial and submitted it on May 2, 2002. The request was based on the following reasons:

  • Bernhard M. was alibidous as a result of meningitis in infancy and was unable to achieve a stable erection or sexual intercourse.
  • Evidently, there were agreements between Amelie and a nurse regarding her police statements.
  • Amelie had changed the date of a rape charge in the first trial after a witness exonerated Bernhard M. This postponement did not happen out of remorse, as claimed in the proceedings, but because an investigating officer leaked this statement to her and it shook her credibility.
  • The alleged rape in the Toyota could not take place due to lack of space.
  • Amelie had taken the anticoagulants Marcumar and Aspirin in large quantities to inflict hematomas on herself .
  • Amelie is sick with borderline, which severely limits her credibility. Against their better knowledge, the therapists denied this in the negotiation at the time.

A statement by the examining prosecutor continues to support the judgment. Nevertheless, the Oldenburg Regional Court granted the request. The new proceedings against Bernhard M. ended in 2005 with an acquittal in which he was certified as having “proven innocence”.

Schwenn then applied for a retrial for Adolf S. This was also acquitted in 2006 without renegotiation.

processing

The court reporter Sabine Rückert described the processes in detail in her book Injustice in the Name of the People: A Miscarriage of Justice and its Consequences and published further articles on the case. She sees Adolf S. and Bernhard M. as victims of a group of supporters of the witness.

This includes the staff of the adolescent psychiatry who blindly believed Amelie's statements, denied the diagnosis “borderline” and withheld a written confession that her allegations were fictitious so as not to endanger Amelie's credibility in court. Furthermore, the responsible investigator of the criminal police consistently refrained from securing material evidence such as sperm traces, instead kept the alleged victim informed about the progress of the investigation and illegally released the protocol of Amelie's first police interrogation to the clinic management.

The Osnabrück Regional Court finally failed in both trials to obtain an independent psychiatric assessment from the witness. An assessment by Bernhard M. had also been omitted despite indications of his sexual appetite disorder . An annulment of the judgment by the Federal Court of Justice was only prevented by a distorted presentation of the facts in the grounds of the judgment.

Civil law suits brought by attorney Schwenn against the presiding judge, a psychiatrist and Amelie were dismissed.

literature

Web links

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sabine Rückert, Andreas Sentker: Crimes - An unsuspecting person is carried away (Part 2). In: ZEIT Crime. January 29, 2019, accessed August 2, 2020 .
  2. ↑ a b c Sabine Rückert: Proven innocence. In: The time. April 4, 2008. Retrieved September 21, 2014.
  3. ↑ a b c Sabine Rückert, Andreas Sentker: Verbrechen - lies and deceit in front of the court (part 3). In: ZEIT Crime. February 12, 2019, accessed August 2, 2020 .
  4. ↑ a b c Patrick Burow: The lexicon of legal errors. Eichborn-Verlag, 2013, ISBN 978-3-8387-4536-7 , pp. 1980 ff.
  5. ↑ Did Papenburg's miscarriage of justice fall victim? In: New Osnabrück Newspaper. May 3, 2002. Retrieved September 28, 2014.
  6. ↑ a b Sabine Rückert: Injustice in the name of the people. In: The time. May 2, 2002. Retrieved August 27, 2014.
  7. ↑ a b Sabine Rückert, Andreas Sentker: Crimes - The justice system scratches and bites (Part 4). In: ZEIT Crime. February 26, 2019, accessed August 2, 2020 .