The Ingolstadt Regional Court must hear a fatal speeding accident on the A9 motorway for the third time. The Federal Court of Justice (BGH) in Karlsruhe has overturned the conviction of the now 27-year-old defendant for the second time. “The Regional Court wrongly considered some of the findings on the facts from the first legal process to be binding and therefore did not make the necessary findings of its own,” the BGH announced on Wednesday. The case must therefore now be heard again before the Regional Court (case number 4 StR 493/23).
The defendant was sentenced to three years and four months in prison in July 2023 in Ingolstadt for a prohibited motor vehicle race that resulted in death. In 2021, the regional court had already sentenced the man to a similar prison sentence, after which the judges in Karlsruhe had already received the first verdict.
According to the indictment, in October 2019, the then 22-year-old drove his sports car, which was tuned to more than 560 hp, at more than 230 kilometers per hour on the A9 near Ingolstadt at night; a maximum speed of 100 km/h was permitted on the stretch of road at that time. When a car in front changed lanes, the defendant crashed his car into the rear of the car despite braking hard. The 22-year-old in the vehicle in front had no chance of survival and died instantly.
The defendant admitted the allegations in the proceedings and emphasized his regret over the victim’s death. The man was accused of manslaughter, and in the second trial the public prosecutor’s office demanded around eight years in prison. However, the criminal chamber did not follow this assessment; the judges did not see it as a homicide. The defendant’s defense attorneys, however, only rated the crime as negligent homicide and had advocated a maximum two-year suspended sentence.