Miscarriage of justice around Ralf Witte

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The miscarriage of justice surrounding Ralf Witte concerns the case of the German tram driver Ralf Witte (*  1964 ), who was wrongly convicted of rape in 2004 and acquitted after five years in prison after a retrial in 2010.

Directly connected to this is the case of his friend Karl-Heinz Wulfhorst, who is 15 years older than him, who was also wrongly sentenced to imprisonment for rape in 2004 and acquitted in 2010. The two cases are collectively referred to as the "Witte / Wulfhorst case".

case

Accusation and Conviction (2001-2004)

In 2001 Ralf Witte lived in a village near Hanover with his second wife, two children from his first marriage and one child from his second marriage. The then 15-year-old Jennifer W., the daughter of his friend Karl-Heinz W., worked as a nanny for him. Some time after her last assignment as a nanny, she went to the police station and reported Ralf Witte for rape. She accused Ralf Witte of deflowering her and brutally raping her several times together with her own father. Pre- trial detention was ordered against Ralf Witte and Karl-Heinz W. Since Witte could show an alibi for five of the alleged times of the crime and no DNA traces were found, he was released from custody after 23 days.

Nevertheless, there was an indictment before the Hanover Regional Court . The proceedings dragged on with 42 days of negotiations over eleven months. On the early advice of his lawyer, Ralf Witte had not only laboriously reconstructed what he had done on the alleged dates and where he had been, but also the day before and the day after, so that he had to show an alibi for those days as well. But even this was not enough for the judge. When it came to the alibi for a Wednesday and Witte's supervisor was able to confirm Witte's presence at work for the entire week in question, the judge objected that Jennifer W. could have been wrong during the week, which led to the allegation that all alibis are worthless. Witte protested against this unfair procedure, he showed the judge a bird and addressed him with "You idiot". Despite his alibis and a medical examination found the girl to be virgin, Ralf Witte was sentenced on May 7, 2004 to twelve years and eight months in prison. Karl-Heinz W. was sentenced to five years and eight months in prison. Two experts had stated in the process that Jennifer W. was absolutely credible.

The fact that Ralf Witte was sentenced to a much longer prison term than Karl-Heinz W., although essentially the same allegations were involved, was explained in retrospect by the fact that, being aware of his innocence, he had felt confident of victory during the trial and towards the judge repeatedly behaved disrespectfully.

After the sentencing

On September 15, 2004, four months after the conviction, the alleged victim Jennifer W. brought new allegations to the Hanover public prosecutor . She had been a victim of a girl trafficking ring since she was eight and was raped and filmed by her father for years. She had to watch how a baby born by another victim was thrown against the wall and killed. The new claim that she had been raped again and again as an eight-year-old contradicted her previous claim that she was deflowered by Ralf Witte when she was 15.

The prosecution failed to resolve this contradiction and examined Jennifer W.'s other allegations to no avail. The accused could neither be identified nor the scene of the crime located. The revision of Ralf Witte's judgment at the Federal Court of Justice had not yet been completed, but the public prosecutor's office did not forward its findings. In addition to the investigating public prosecutor, the head of the agency, the deputy head of the agency and the Hanoverian police chief were also informed about the problematic and inconsistent statements made by Jennifer W. They too should not have withheld their knowledge ex officio, which exonerated the convicts.

The investigation into the new allegations was suspended for about three years. During this time, they "tried again and again to hold further discussions with Jennifer W. in order to get more specific information about the girl trafficking ring", but this was not successful in the three years. Sometimes Jennifer W's lawyer informed the investigators that her client was abroad, sometimes that she lived under a false name in Hanover and could therefore not be found. Jennifer W. gave an interview to Bravo magazine when she was not available to the public prosecutor and was then clearly visible in photos in the magazine. Eventually the proceedings were closed. At the beginning of 2008, Jennifer W. told the authority that she no longer wanted to provide any information on the matter. The public prosecutor's office thereupon initiated an investigation on suspicion of false testimony .

Readmission and acquittal (2009-2010)

In 2009, Johann Schwenn managed to reopen the trial against Witte as Ralf Witte's new lawyer. He accused the prosecutor of withholding exculpatory material and spoke of a judicial scandal . The authority rejected the allegation. The district court of Lüneburg , responsible for the reopening, had a new report drawn up on the witness Jennifer W., which came to the conclusion that there were clear doubts about her credibility. She suffers from borderline symptoms. Thereupon the regional court ordered the immediate interruption of the execution and the release of Witte after five years of imprisonment. Shortly before the verdict, Jennifer W., represented by her lawyer, presented a certificate stating that she had cancer due to the alleged rape. The judge interrupted the session and explained personally on the same day that the certificate was a total forgery.

After one and a half years of retrial and five weeks of negotiations, Ralf Witte and Karl-Heinz Wulfhorst were acquitted of rape charges on September 8, 2010 by the Lüneburg Regional Court. In his justification, the presiding judge stated: "This case should not even have been charged in Hanover."

Half a year before his release, Ralf Witte had already been acquitted in a civil case in which Jennifer W. had tried to obtain compensation from him. This judgment was a turning point. On his website, Witte writes that he was able to have good experiences in this civil case at the Hanover Regional Court, "so everything that is decided in this house is not bad."

After the acquittal

Witte's defense attorney Johann Schwenn expressed harsh criticism after the acquittal because of the misjudgments in 2004. He accused the judges and prosecutors at the Hanover Regional Court who were involved at the time in incapacity and “unbelievable unprofessionalism”. The court in Hanover was biased in favor of the alleged victim. This can also be seen in the highly emotional tone of the grounds for the judgment at the time, which alone should have caused the Federal Court of Justice to overturn the judgment. After a criminal complaint by Schwenn, a preliminary investigation was initiated against the rapporteur of the Hanoverian criminal chamber on suspicion of false unsavory testimony after she had invoked considerable memory gaps during the retrial. Against the prosecutors in Hanover, also based on a criminal complaint by Schwenn, proceedings for perversion of the law were initiated. The Lower Saxony Minister of Justice Bernd Busemann criticized the behavior of the public prosecutor and expressed his regret because of the incorrect convictions and their grave consequences.

Jennifer W. got a new identity out of fear of Witte and her father; she had to pay a fine of 5,000 euros for the fake certificate. The reviewers, who had attested her credibility in 2004, were not brought to justice because of their misjudgments at the time. Like the Hanover Regional Court, they refused to comment on the television magazine Panorama in 2013 .

After his acquittal, Ralf Witte said: “History has destroyed ten years of my life. Five years and eight months that I spent in prison cannot be made up for with money. ”He had lost his job with the Hanover transport company , friends and acquaintances had turned away. He suffered from anxiety , was unable to work and was retiring after his prison sentence . He also had to give up his house. For the wrongly suffered five and a half years in prison, he received 50,000 euros in compensation (25 euros per day). From this, 6,000 euros in meal money were deducted.

On November 24, 2010, Witte emailed Jörg Kachelmann , who was also charged with alleged rape at the time and was on trial in the Kachelmann trial . Witte reported on his case and advised Kachelmann to swap his lawyer Reinhard Birkenstock for Johann Schwenn . Kachelmann followed the advice and was later acquitted as well.

During a television appearance in early 2015, Ralf Witte said that he would take legal action because of the injustice he had suffered and would not give up. According to Witte, his lawyer said at the time: "It will take ten years to get through it." Witte said it was impossible for him to go back to work because he still had to deal with this stressful "stuff" every day .

In 2019 Ralf Witte still had to seek therapeutic help because of his anxiety. In order to process his disturbing experiences, he wrote a book in which he analyzes the shortcomings of the judiciary in handling his case, which he has not yet published. On his personal website he drew the following balance:

“I was innocent, but the Hanover Regional Court believed a girl made up stories. My pledges of innocence and the arguments of my lawyer should have convinced the court, but the court had an absolute will to convict. Of course, you can't solve every crime, but in our case you could have discovered the truth very quickly if you had only wanted to. Our case is much more about the injustice that was unnecessarily done to me and my co-defendant! The Second Youth Chamber of the Regional Court and the Hanover public prosecutor should have recognized that these allegations were completely out of thin air. [...] She put two innocent men in prison for many years because they believed a liar. Today I would like to thank the people who believed in me [...] "

See also

literature

Web links

Videos on YouTube

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Landeszeitung Lüneburg: "The supervisory authorities have failed" - lawyer Schwenn wants to hold the Hanoverian judiciary responsible for misjudgments in the abuse process. presseportal.de, September 16, 2010.
  2. ^ A b Landeszeitung Lüneburg: Questions and statements from the regional court and public prosecutor's office in Hanover on the allegations of perversion of the law and deprivation of liberty. presseportal.de, September 16, 2010.
  3. ↑ See interview with Johann Schwenn in the Landeszeitung Lüneburg presseportal.de, September 16, 2010. On the one hand, the lawyer Schwenn names the two cases separately: "The Witte and Wulfhorst cases are case four and five in my practice alone ...", on the other hand, speaks he summarized five times from the "Witte / Wulfhorst case" and from the "Witte / Wulfhorst case".
  4. ↑ Script for the panorama broadcast on September 23, 2010 on the subject of rape: Five years innocent in prison (PDF).
  5. ↑ a b Until Karl-Heinz Wulfhorst's acquittal in 2010, his surname or the surname of his daughter was abbreviated as W. in the media.
  6. ^ Statements by Ralf Witte in the ARD show Menschen bei Maischberger on January 27, 2015, see excerpt on YouTube.
  7. ↑ a b c d e f Tobias Morchner: Five years innocent in prison? , Hannoversche Allgemeine, June 24, 2009.
  8. ↑ a b Thilo Schmidt: On dealing with allegations of rape: Testimony against testimony deutschlandfunkkultur.de, February 13, 2017.
  9. ↑ a b c d Homepage of Ralf Witte , accessed on June 12, 2020.
  10. ^ Statements by Ralf Witte in the ARD program Menschen bei Maischberger from January 27, 2015, see excerpt on YouTube, here 4:50 to 6:20.
  11. ↑ No Kachelmann, no Wulff, but Pechstein Mitteldeutsche Zeitung , January 28, 2015.
  12. ↑ a b c Sabine Rückert: Charge of rape: Battle of Kachelmann. In: The time. December 20, 2010, archived from the original on June 30, 2013 ; accessed on March 12, 2019 .
  13. ^ Statement by Ralf Witte in the WDR program Planet Wissen , 2016, see video on YouTube, here 8:24 am to 8:30 am.
  14. ^ Statement by Ralf Witte in the WDR program Planet Wissen , 2016, see video on YouTube, here 7:46 am to 8:30 am.
  15. ↑ a b c d Five years in prison: Public prosecutor's office withholds exonerating material , description of the panorama broadcast from June 25, 2009, NDR.
  16. ↑ a b c Innocent in prison: acquittal after five years in prison haz.de, September 8, 2010.
  17. ↑ a b Rape: Five years innocent in prison , Panorama, NDR, September 23, 2010, excerpt from the program on YouTube (length 07:27 min.), Script for the program as a PDF file.
  18. ↑ a b That should be right? NDR , TV documentary in the ARD theme week "Justice", November 12, 2018.
  19. ^ Statements by Ralf Witte in the WDR program Planet Wissen , 2016, see video on YouTube, here 25:11 to 26:55.
  20. ↑ Statements by Sandra Maischberger and Ralf Witte in the ARD program Menschen bei Maischberger on January 27, 2015, see excerpt on YouTube, here 10:50 to 11:08.
  21. ↑ a b About me justizopferralfwitte.de, accessed on June 12, 2020.
  22. ↑ Reviewer: Die heimlichen Richter Panorama, NDR, October 31, 2013, script for the broadcast as a PDF file.
  23. ↑ a b c 5 ½ years wrongly in prison: Review of an evening lecture with Ralf Witte Law Faculty of the University of Hanover , January 28, 2019 (The date of the evening of the lecture was January 14, 2019, the year 2018 in the article is an oversight .)
  24. ^ Statement by Sandra Maischberger and Ralf Witte in the ARD show Menschen bei Maischberger from January 27, 2015, see excerpt on YouTube, here 12:23 to 12:26.
  25. ↑ Hannah Beitzer: Hell are the others , Süddeutsche Zeitung, January 28, 2015.
  26. ^ Acquittal for Kachelmann in: Spiegel Online , May 31, 2011. Accessed October 1, 2013
  27. ^ Statements by Ralf Witte in the ARD show Menschen bei Maischberger from January 27, 2015, see excerpt on YouTube, here 15:08 to 15:36.