Sometimes crooks expose themselves not only through their DNA, but also through their clothing. As in the case of a worker who has now been sentenced to two years and two months in prison by a lay judge at the Munich District Court for robbery and attempted robbery as well as intentional bodily harm. When he committed the crime, the 37-year-old wore a pair of jogging pants with a striking pattern. That should pay off.
In August last year, the man initially attacked a student in the city of Munich at night. Since she did not want to give her bag to the accused as requested, he tried to snatch it from her. A scuffle ensued, in which the student was slightly injured. When she started screaming, the 37-year-old ran away without taking anything.
Almost three weeks after this incident, however, the man struck again. This time the victim was an employee who was on his way home just after midnight. The worker hit the employee in the face with his fist and stole his almost new cell phone and wallet. The search for the man was relatively easy. Because the police managed to secure usable DNA traces on the clothes of both victims. In addition, the student was able to identify the worker as the perpetrator with a so-called choice photo template from the police.
Then everything happened very quickly. The investigators found that the seized DNA matched that of the man already known to the police, whom the student had recognized in police photos. When the investigators then searched the 37-year-old’s apartment, they also found the conspicuously patterned sweatpants that the two victims had reported when they were questioned by the police.
Despite this overwhelming evidence, the accused denied the crimes in the hearing before the lay judge. The presiding judge was not impressed. Neither did the 37-year-old assure her: “I believe in God and I would never hit anyone.” Rather, the judge found in her judgment that there was no plausible explanation for how the suspect’s DNA traces got on the victims’ clothing. The judgment of the lay judge (Az. 813 Ls 271 Js 193514/21) is not yet final.