Abstract
AbstractThe Regional Court of Berlin (Landgericht (LG) Berlin) was the first court in Germany to mete out a life sentence for murder—pursuant to § 211 German Criminal Code (StGB)—to two men convicted of killing an uninvolved driver whose car they hit while they were participating in an illegal car race on a public highway. Upon their convictions, the defendants appealed to the German Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof; BGH) claiming that they did not intend to kill the person and were thus acting without the necessary mens rea for murder. The question whether or not the case could be qualified as murder, and thus whether or not the existence of a killing with intent had been sufficiently proven by the LG Berlin, was the subject of several appeals and retrials. In its latest decision, the BGH confirmed the murder conviction of one of the defendants, while quashing the other defendant’s conviction and issuing a retrial. This case caused ripples amongst legal scholars as it called for the toughest possible sanctions to be imposed. However, whether the conduct qualifies as murder remains questionable. As a reaction to several similar cases of illegal car races in recent years, the German parliament subsequently passed a new law—§ 315d StGB—proscribing illegal vehicle races, thereby penalizing the participation, organization, or carrying out of an illegal vehicle race. Until that point there had been no provision criminalizing illegal racing.
Highlights
The Regional Court of Berlin (Landgericht (LG) Berlin) was the first court in Germany to mete out a life sentence for murder—pursuant to § 211 German Criminal Code (StGB)—to two men convicted of killing an uninvolved driver whose car they hit while they were participating in an illegal car race on a public highway
The LG Berlin found the men guilty of the murder of another driver who was in no way involved in the race, and sentenced the defendants to life imprisonment—the mandatory sentence for murder
The Raserurteil triggered vigorous debates among legal scholars—especially with regard to the intent possessed by the defendants in relation to the killing of the victim—and among the general public
Summary
On the evening of January 31, 2016, the defendant, N—who had K sitting in his passenger seat— came to a standstill at a red traffic light in his Mercedes, with his side window lowered. The second defendant, H, stopped at the same red traffic light right next to N’s car, with his side window wound down. A short conversation occurred between both defendants through the open windows of their vehicles, and both parties implicitly agreed— through the use of gestures and the repeated revving up of the cars’ engines—to hold an illegal road race along the Kurfürstendamm. It was late at night and the volume of traffic had abated considerably, traffic was still moderately high.
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