A good six years after an initial conviction for manslaughter, a man from Lower Bavaria is considered a murderer with a final conviction. The Federal Court of Justice (BGH) in Karlsruhe rejected an appeal against the sentence to life imprisonment from the retrial as unfounded, the Deggendorf district court announced on Wednesday. The defendant’s defense attorneys had appealed the October 2022 verdict.
The man was sentenced to 12 years in prison for manslaughter in 2017. However, the trial resumed after two witnesses who testified in favor of the defendant at the first trial were convicted of false testimony. The Deggendorf judges then did not rule out that their Passau colleagues would have pronounced a murder verdict in 2017 without the false statements.
The then 22-year-old had killed his 20-year-old ex-girlfriend in her sleep with numerous stab wounds. In the first trial, the judges could not prove beyond a doubt that the man stabbed his victim when he was already asleep. In the second trial, the Deggendorf district court saw this as proven, which meant the murder characteristic of insidiousness.