The Munich judge Manfred Götzl led the most important trial of the post-reunification period in Germany, the NSU trial, and after 438 days of hearings he left the courtroom as the undisputed master of the trial: no complaint of bias threw him off track, no surprise caused him to falter, and in the end, the Federal Court of Justice upheld the verdict.
One can assume that for Götzl this was the last, the most important confirmation of his work. Proof that he was right. At best, the Federal Court of Justice’s statement that the NSU verdict, with its 3,025 pages, was already a bit sprawling could cast a tiny shadow over Götzl’s work. A tiny shadow too much, if you know Götzl’s penchant for perfectionism.
Now, according to the will of Munich criminal defense attorney Peter Witting, another shadow is to be added. For the third time, he initiates a retrial in Götzl’s second most important case, the murder of a wealthy Munich parking garage owner. Götzl sentenced her nephew Benedikt T. to life imprisonment in 2008: murder out of greed.
Defense attorney Witting had taken off his robe in protest at the verdict and left the room, an outrageous process for lawyers. For years, Witting has been trying to find new witnesses and new details that could exonerate the convicted Benedikt T. Now he thinks he has found what he is looking for: there is evidence of another perpetrator who had also benefited from the inheritance of the car park owner.
Götzl attaches great importance to forms, discipline and politeness. What Götzl absolutely can’t stand is when someone questions his authority. But in the parking garage murder process he had to experience exactly that. When the verdict was announced, friends and the accused’s brother slammed their doors, shouted “dictatorship”, and the accused accused the judge of only saying “blah, blah, blah”. And when Götzl exclaimed, “What’s going on here? Don’t you respect the law?” – then scornful laughter broke out at him. At that moment you have to imagine Götzl as a person who no longer understands the world. For him, emotions do not belong in the courtroom, he finds big emotions disturbing.
The judge loves details, but also makes idiosyncratic decisions
He is meticulous down to the last detail, but that doesn’t stop him from making idiosyncratic decisions: In the NSU trial, for example, he let a neo-Nazi, the terrorist cell’s closest confidant, get off lightly. He also believed a Hessian intelligence officer who was at the scene of an NSU murder and lied about it – after he had had him come to court five times in Munich. And in the case of Benedikt T., the fact that the perpetrator struck with his right hand did not prevent him from convicting the accused, even though he is left-handed. The court explained that the other evidence closed “like a ring” around Benedikt T.
Götzl retired two years ago, before that he was briefly Vice President of the Bavarian Supreme Court – thanks for five years of hard work in the NSU trial. Others would write books about this wildly eventful legal life, give interviews, tell what he experienced, for example, during the trial against the murderer of fashion designer Rudolph Moshammer. But Götzl says nothing. Not a word. Hardly anything is known about him: only that he has grown-up children, can be funny in private and likes to hike in the mountains. If there is a retrial in the case of the parking garage murder, one thing is certain: Götzl will remain silent and wander. And if it doesn’t come back: Then Götzl was right again.