Prohibited Legal Hearing Communications
According to German criminal law , notifications about court hearings are prohibited in certain cases and are punishable as an offense under Section 353d StGB . The paragraph is located in the section on offenses in office , but it is unanimously agreed that it applies to everyone. The maximum penalty is one year imprisonment.
Offenses
Notices of Closed Trials
According to § 353d No. 1 StGB it is forbidden to make a public announcement about a court hearing at which the public was excluded or about the content of an official document concerning this procedure.
Messages contrary to statutory confidentiality
According to § 353d No. 2 StGB it is forbidden, contrary to an obligation of confidentiality imposed by the court on the basis of a law, to disclose unauthorized facts which the perpetrator became aware of during a closed court hearing or through an official document relating to this procedure.
Publications of documents from criminal proceedings
According to § 353d No. 3 StGB it is forbidden to publicly communicate the indictment or other official documents of criminal proceedings , fine proceedings or disciplinary proceedings in whole or in substantial parts before these documents have been discussed in public or the proceedings have been concluded.
Case law of the Federal Constitutional Court
Judgment of December 3, 1985 (1 BvL 15/84)
The Federal Constitutional Court had to judge the question of whether § 353d No. 3 StGB violated the freedom of the press after publications by Stern magazine about the Flick trial . It considered the standard to be compatible with the Basic Law as long as the publication took place without or against the will of the person affected by the reporting . Among other things, the star had published excerpts from the minutes of the interrogation of an accused and two witnesses, as well as verbatim quotations from protective letters of the defense lawyers of two other accused. This led to criminal prosecution of the journalists responsible.
Decision of June 27, 2014 (2 BvR 429/12)
Now the Federal Constitutional Court had to decide whether the accused could also make himself liable to prosecution if he published documents from his own criminal proceedings and invoked freedom of expression and the general right of personality as a victim of the reports . In this case too, it considered the standard to be compatible with the Basic Law and applicable. The standard is protected not only by protecting the accused from public prejudice, but also by ensuring that the administration of criminal justice functions properly. The proceedings were based on the case of a suspected art forger who wanted to defend himself against newspaper articles in which, in his opinion, the allegations made by the public prosecutor were incorrectly reported. For this he posted parts of his own indictment on the Internet and was therefore sentenced to a fine.
