False insulting statement

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The false unofficial testimony is the basic offense of testimony offenses . In the German Criminal Code , it is regulated in Section 153 of the Criminal Code and is threatened with imprisonment from three months to five years.

Perpetrator and act

Untrue statements will be punished if they are unduly questioned in court or in another competent authority. This is intended to protect the proper functioning of the administration of justice and avoid misjudgments .

According to the wording of the law, suitable perpetrators can only be witnesses and experts . A criminal liability of the defendant or the parties to civil proceedings are therefore ruled out. However, you can be liable to prosecution for inciting false statements ( Section 160 StGB). Unity of offense is possible with litigation fraud ( § 263 StGB), defamation ( § 187 StGB) or defamation ( § 186 StGB).

The scope of the duty of truth is limited by the subject of the questioning. Since a statement must be complete, the withholding of facts is also part of the offense.

It is controversial when a statement is wrong in the criminal sense . According to the objective statement theory advocated by the Federal Court of Justice , the only thing that matters is that the statement does not objectively match reality (discrepancy between word and reality). Because it is the task of the administration of justice to seek the objective truth. The subjective statement theory is based on the discrepancy between word and image of the perpetrator. The perpetrator must therefore consciously present a different issue than the one he perceived. If the perpetrator believes that he is speaking truthfully, the objective fact does not apply. The duty theory considered a statement then be false when the Aussagende does not reflect the one he his remembrance and cognition had in our critical examination can play (contradiction between word and obligation). It modifies the subjective theory with objective elements.

Addressee of the act

This includes the courts , the investigating judge and the parliamentary committees of inquiry ( Section 162 (2) StGB). In particular, the public prosecutor's office and the police are not authorized to take oaths. The law expressly mentions courts, by which state courts are meant. Private arbitration courts are not included.

attempt

The trial of false unsworn statement is not punishable. This gives rise to the problem of the point at which the crime is completed . In any case, the act is completed when a correction is no longer possible. It is commonly held that perfection has already occurred when the person making the statement does not want to say anything more and no more questions are asked to him, at the latest when the witness is dismissed.

Mitigation and waiver of punishment

In the case of a state of emergency ( Section 157 StGB ) as a special reason to mitigate the sentence, the punishment can be dispensed with entirely. It is also possible to mitigate the sentence or waive it if the statement is corrected or supplemented in good time ( Section 158 of the Criminal Code ).

statistics

Since statements offenses are reported directly to the public prosecutor and only processed by them, they do not record the police crime statistics . There are around 4,000 convictions per year in Germany for testifying offenses, 800 of them for perjury and 2,500 to 3,000 for false, unofficial testimony.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ False unofficial statement, § 153 StGB juraschema.de, accessed on July 25, 2019
  2. ↑ BGHSt 1, p. 23.
  3. ↑ Bernd Heinrich : Testimony, §§ 153 ff. StGB University of Tübingen, as of October 1, 2018
  4. ↑ BGHSt 7, p. 147ff.
  5. ^ LG Bremen, Neue Juristische Wochenschrift 1960, pp. 1827f.
  6. ↑ Otto, JuS 1984, p. 162.
  7. ↑ Dirk Streifler: § 153 StGB: False unofficial statement online comment, accessed on July 25, 2019
  8. ↑ Dirk Streifler: § 153 StGB: False unofficial statement online comment, accessed on July 25, 2019
  9. ↑ Federal Criminal Police Office (Ed.): General information on the police crime statistics (PKS) Police crime statistics 2018, accessed on July 26, 2019
  10. ^ Henning Ernst Müller : Wrong testimony and participation theory . Introduction p. 2, quoted from Eisenberg, Kriminologie , § 28 Rn. 53 and Vormbaum, NK , § 154 Rn. 56