Cyclist case
The cyclist case is a famous case study in jurisprudence that goes back to a decision of the Federal Court of Justice of September 25, 1957. The case study illustrates the problem of assessing the necessary causality between the action and the success of the crime .
facts
The defendant drove his truck on a well-developed country road; In doing so, he overtook a cyclist too close to the person being overtaken (75 cm instead of the prescribed 1.50 m). During the overtaking maneuver, the cyclist fell under the trailer of the truck and was immediately dead. A blood sample taken from the corpse showed a blood alcohol concentration of 1.96 per mille at the time of the crime.
The lay judge at the Rheine District Court convicted the driver of negligent homicide . In response to the defendant's appeal, the Münster Regional Court acquitted the defendant of the accusation of negligent homicide and only imposed a small fine . From the point of view of the regional court, the causality of the traffic violation for the death of the cyclist was lacking, since due to the high blood alcohol concentration the death of the cyclist would most likely have occurred even if they had behaved in accordance with their duties.
In response to the appeal by the public prosecutor's office, the Hamm Higher Regional Court submitted the legal question to the Federal Court of Justice as to whether the criminal justice judge may always affirm the causality between the offense and the success of the offense if the opposite is not expressly proven.
Summary of the judgment
The Federal Court of Justice first ruled that the existence of the objective fact, in particular the necessary causality between the act and the success of the act, is subject to the free conviction of the judge.
However, due to the presumption of innocence vis-à-vis the accused, the judge must in principle prove the existence of the objective facts. Just as the theoretical possibility of a missing causality is not sufficient to deny it, the existence of causality has to be proven under all conceivable circumstances. It is enough if the judge has won the human conviction that the causality is certain.
In doing so, however, the criminal justice judge must not disregard serious doubts about the causality to the detriment of the accused. Serious doubts do not only arise when the reasons against a causality predominate, but rather when they exclude the conviction of the certainty of the contrary, which the judge must explain and discuss in the judgment. Absolute certainty or even proof of the lack of causality is not necessary.
The challenged judgment of the regional court fulfills these criteria. The judge justifiably had serious doubts as to whether the crime would not have been successful even if he had acted in accordance with his duties. An expert found that the cyclist initially did not notice the truck because of the heavy drunkenness, then suddenly got frightened, pulled to the left and got under the wheels of the trailer. Under these circumstances, the judge was convinced that the cyclist would have died even if the accused had kept a sufficient safety distance from the cyclist, because in this case too the cyclist would have reacted in the same way, the greater safety distance would have been due to the speed of the Cyclist only affected within fractions of a second. Under these circumstances, the regional court could rightly acquit the defendant from the charge of negligent homicide.