processes
Cocaine addict shoots dealer: eight and a half years in prison
The Criminal Justice Center in Munich. Photo: Sven Hoppe/dpa
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It was about a dispute between a dealer and his customers: A 25-year-old has to go to prison in Munich for manslaughter – after even the Federal Court of Justice dealt with the case.
On Friday, the Munich Regional Court sentenced a drug addict of the same age to eight and a half years in prison for the manslaughter of his 25-year-old cocaine dealer.
According to the court, the accused had been “extorted by the dead person using massive threats and physical violence” to pay debts plus penalty interest. He then shot him on March 17, 2020.
In the first instance, the accused had been sentenced to life imprisonment for murder. However, the Federal Court of Justice overturned the verdict because the man was in an ongoing and acute situation of blackmail and had not acted treacherously. The BGH changed the guilty verdict to a manslaughter conviction and referred the case back to the district court for the determination of the sentence.
According to the verdict, the cocaine dealer demanded immediate payment of 700 euros from his customer in November 2019, then added penalty interest, hit the accused and finally demanded around 8,000 euros from him in March 2020. When he allegedly wanted to pay, the dealer “hit the accused with full force in the stomach so that he actually fulfilled his promise to pay”. The accused, “clearly disinhibited after having previously consumed cocaine”, then took a pistol from the attic, got into the back of the dealer’s car and killed him with three shots.
The Trial Chamber ordered the defendant’s placement in a rehab facility once he had served 2 years and 3 months of his sentence. The verdict is not yet legally binding. The public prosecutor had requested 14 years imprisonment, the defense 5 years and 6 months.