Conflict defense
The conflict defense or confrontation defense is an aggressive type of criminal defense that provides the court or the process as a whole in question rather than merely the accusation of the prosecution. The defense attorney's approach is aimed at exhausting the possibilities of the Code of Criminal Procedure in order to bring court proceedings to the verge of manageability and to let them break if possible or to end them with an advantageous arrangement.
term
The term aims at the fact that in conventional criminal defense the defense accepts the judge as a neutral authority and treats it with respect and only argues against the accuser, while the conflict defense also questions the legitimacy of the judge and the court, i.e. also on builds up the conflict with the judge instead of trying to convince the judge. Although often used, the term is fuzzy because it is used partly as a collective term for supposedly inadmissible defense behavior, partly for legitimate criminal defense.
application
Conflict defense with the exhaustion of all possibilities of defense takes place in relatively few proceedings, even if subjectively because of the long duration of the proceedings, there may be the impression that the proceedings have prevailed. Conflict defense is used particularly in litigation involving politically motivated or political criminal offenses , when the accused question the existing state system and want to express this with their defense strategy. The distinction between the still permissible exercise of the defense and the inadmissible abuse of the possibilities of criminal proceedings is not clear. In the legal literature, the question is sometimes discussed whether conflict defense as sabotage of the criminal procedure itself should not meet the criminal offense of preventing punishment or whether rules should be introduced that punish such an approach.
Specifically, the following are typical for conflict defense:
- Requests for evidence and bias , especially in large numbers
- Disregard of word divisions by the court
- In between shouting at statements by other parties involved in the proceedings,
- Questioning tactics to provoke prosecution witnesses to behave improperly
- Attempt to divert evidence away from the charge
- Submitting applications with the intention that they will not be given a positive decision, but will be rejected with a legal error
- Actions that are purely intended to prolong the process (e.g. defense attorney takes sick leave)
- Using the defendant's right to express political opinions
- Requests for the summons of witnesses who are abroad, especially in countries with which there is no judicial assistance agreement
literature
- Jürgen Heinrich: Conflict defense in criminal proceedings. Munich 2013
Web links
- Matthias Jahn: Can "defense of conflicts" prevent punishment (§ 258 StGB)? (PDF) Archived from the original on July 2, 2007 ; accessed on June 20, 2016 (206.5 kB).
- Matthias Jahn: Meeting police versus "conflict defense"? (PDF) Archived from the original on July 2, 2007 ; accessed on June 20, 2016 (193.8 kB).
- Kirsten Stang: Conflict defense: a threat to the rule of law? Comments on the panel discussion at the regional representative assembly on November 5, 2005 in Bad Zwischenahn. Lower Saxony Judges' Association, archived from the original on October 21, 2008 ; Retrieved June 20, 2016 .
- Mirko Laudon: Conflict Defense. In: strafakte.de. September 11, 2013, accessed June 20, 2016 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Reiner Burger: Condemned according to all the rules of the rule of law. In: FAZ from June 12, 2020.
- ↑ Screams and fear of violence: suddenly armed officials storm the courtroom In: FOCUS Online from July 16, 2020.
