Severed head dumped in Bonn city center: Prison sentence legally binding
The deceased and the defendant were friends. They were also both homeless. The cause of death was tuberculosis, as a post-mortem examination of the body revealed. According to the district court, the defendant carried the severed head of the deceased in a bag through the city to the courthouse in June 2022 and placed it there so that the face was turned towards the street.
He then stayed nearby and observed how passers-by reacted. He was aware that many passers-by would be able to look at the dead man's face and wide-open eyes and also see the inside of the severed neck, the district court explained. This would cause them lasting shock and hurt their sense of respect.
It was not proven that the defendant himself had severed the head from the body. The headless body was found at the edge of a public park. The 39-year-old remained silent during the trial, which is why his motivation remained unclear. Both the defendant himself and the public prosecutor defended themselves against the Bonn verdict before the BGH.
The judges in Karlsruhe now declared that they had not found any legal errors. It was not objectionable that the regional court assumed that the defendant was fully capable of guilt. Furthermore, it had explained without error why it could not establish with the necessary certainty that the defendant had cut off his own head.
The representative of the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office, which performs the tasks of the public prosecutor's office at the Federal Court of Justice, saw things differently during the hearing on Wednesday morning. He argued that the regional court had interpreted the requirements too strictly in this case and requested a retrial of the sentence.
The 39-year-old's defense lawyer, on the other hand, demanded an acquittal. Her client did not have to prove his innocence, she said. The facts established were not sufficient for a conviction for disturbing the peace of the dead. However, both appeals were unsuccessful.
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The defendant had filed an appeal at the Federal Court of Justice located in Karlsruhe, challenging the legally binding verdict issued by the Bonn district court. The severed head was discovered in the City center of Bonn, creating a disturbance and causing lasting shock to the city's residents. The autopsy conducted on the headless body revealed that the cause of death was tuberculosis. Despite staying silent during the trial, the defendant was separated from the Liability judgment due to the appeal process. The public prosecutor's office in Bonn provided their arguments during the proceedings at the Federal Court of Justice.
Source: www.stern.de
