Manfred Genditzki was innocently imprisoned for 13 years. A “tragedy” is the case, says a court spokesman. The judge sees a failure of the judiciary.
When Manfred Genditzki comes out of the courtroom, applause breaks out. Friends, relatives and supporters hug him – many with tears in their eyes. Only the 63-year-old remains surprisingly calm. His face shows no emotion. “I’m not going to jump for joy,” he says. “I don’t have a reason to celebrate, 14 years have passed.”
Shortly before that, the Munich I Regional Court acquitted him in a remarkable judgment of the charge that in October 2008 he drowned an elderly woman in her bathtub in the residential complex where he worked as a caretaker.
accident instead of murder
He was “to be acquitted on factual grounds because of proven innocence” of the charge for which he had previously been convicted twice and had been unjustly imprisoned for around 13 years. The death of the old woman was not a crime, but an accident, the court found, relying on expert opinions that led to the case being opened again after such a long time.
“We’re really, really sorry,” says presiding judge Elisabeth Ehrl, who is visibly moved by the reasoning behind the verdict and even seems to be fighting back tears at the end. The court is sorry “that you were torn from your normal life”, that Genditzki was not granted the opportunity “to see your two younger children grow up, to go to your mother’s funeral”.
It was a rocky road for Genditzki, which he walked with admirable patience. “One can only guess what it looks like inside you.” Genditzki’s children are crying in the auditorium while she says this.
Judge criticizes the judiciary
And then she becomes very clear: “Why was it possible for Mr. Genditzki to be convicted at all at the time,” she asks, and is “very surprised at the investigative work at the time.”
“Ultimately, we can’t judge why everything somehow went wrong then and in the years that followed,” says Ehrl. But it seems to her “as if some things here have been processed very one-sidedly and interpreted to the detriment of Mr. Genditzki”.
She speaks of a “cumulation of mistakes,” of the fact that “control mechanisms didn’t work here” and that a person “was robbed of many years of his life in freedom.”
Long way
Genditzki had appealed after his first conviction by the Munich II Regional Court. The Federal Court of Justice referred the case back to another chamber of the Munich II Regional Court, which sentenced him again in January 2012 to life imprisonment for murder to cover up another crime and bodily harm. Genditzki also appealed against this – this time without success.
For years he fought for a retrial, collected donations for new reports and was finally released from prison last year because the judiciary no longer had any urgent suspicion after these reports had been submitted.
“It’s a tragedy that can hardly be put into words,” says court spokesman Laurent Lafleur, who has a difficult role that day because he not only represents the Munich I district court, but also the Munich II district court, which sentenced Genditzki twice had.
“This is the rule of law,” said Genditzki’s attorney Regina Rick, who fought with him for ten years, after the verdict. The case, the role of the authorities and also the Munich forensic medicine must be processed – and the issue of compensation will also take a lot of time.
Financial Compensation
The fact that the state treasury has to compensate Genditzki for the time he was unjustly in prison is part of the verdict on how high the sum is that he ultimately gets, but is still open.
In Germany, an unjustly imprisoned person receives 75 euros per day of imprisonment in non-pecuniary damages. In Genditzki’s case, that would be less than 400,000 euros for 13 years in which he hardly saw his children and missed the birth of his grandchild. In addition to compensation, Genditzki can also claim material damage, for example due to loss of earnings.
The German Lawyers’ Association has been demanding higher compensation for people who were wrongfully imprisoned for years. “You can’t replace lost freedom, but you would need a minimum of 100 euros a day for symbolic compensation,” says Bernd Müssig, a member of the DAV criminal law committee. Only in 2020 was the rate increased from 25 to 75 euros. “25 euros were a disaster, but 75 are not enough either.”
How often and in what total amount such compensation is paid in Germany is not entirely clear. According to a spokeswoman, the Federal Ministry of Justice asked the federal states for corresponding figures in 2022, but did not receive them from everyone. “Information is missing overall for the states of Bavaria, Lower Saxony and Thuringia, for Hamburg due to a lack of recording for cases of criminal detention,” said the ministry.
Compensation is not an isolated case
The available data shows that in the other federal states in the years 2019 to 2021 a total of 14 people were compensated for a total of 13,713 days of imprisonment. According to the spokeswoman, however, it was primarily about compensation for pre-trial detention or temporary accommodation and only in the rarest of cases – as with Genditzki – in prison.
Müssig from the DAV hardly sees any opportunities to prosecute those involved in proceedings that have gone wrong, such as public prosecutors or judges. “As bitter as it is, people make rights and people make mistakes.”
After the verdict, for which he had been waiting for so long, Genditzki went to a Munich inn. There he meets with supporters, journalists, friends and relatives. He nudges, people hug him, pat him on the shoulder. But he doesn’t want to stay long, he says. He doesn’t feel like celebrating.