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Defendant Stephan Ernst (center) with his defense lawyers Mustafa Kaplan and Jörg Hardies: manslaughter or murder?
Photo: Thomas Lohnes / dpa
The lectern was already installed when Mustafa Kaplan and his colleague Jörg Hardies leaned against the wood-paneled wall in room 165 of the Frankfurt Higher Regional Court last week and waited.
The two defense lawyers were supposed to give their closing presentations and plead for their client Stephan Ernst, the alleged murderer of Walter Lübcke.
The 5th criminal senate is still advising, it said.
When the chairman Thomas Sagebiel issued the legal notice about an hour later that preventive detention could be ordered against Ernst even after his conviction if he was already in custody, Kaplan and Hardies withdrew with their client.
Shortly afterwards, they canceled their lectures for the day.
It is now a "changed process situation," said Kaplan, the pleadings would have to be adjusted accordingly.
Section 66a of the Criminal Code, the reservation of preventive detention, should not have really mixed up the concept of the two lawyers.
From a legal point of view, it is less serious than the immediate order required by the Federal Prosecutor's Office.
And it is a possible indication that the judges are condemning Ernst for the fatal attack on the Kassel district president, but not for the attack on Ahmed I, which was also accused, in 2016. In his plea, Jörg Hardies describes this accusation as completely unfounded and constructed by the Federal Prosecutor's Office to justify preventive detention against Ernst.
"The killing was a political goal"
In a four-hour plea, Mustafa Kaplan devotes herself to the allegation of the murder of Walter Lübcke and tries to argue away the two accused murder features - insidiousness and low motives.
The CDU politician was surprised on his terrace on June 1, 2019 by Ernst and co-defendant Markus H.
Lübcke, sitting in his garden chair, was defenseless, but not innocent due to the threat of a weapon.
The act was not to be regarded as insidious within the meaning of the Criminal Code.
Nor is there an egoistic motive that can be used to explain low motives.
Seriously it was not about one's own advantage.
Ernst lived in a right-wing populist bubble: only people around him who shared his political views - even at work.
"The killing was a political goal, guided by the false belief that it was acting in the general interest," says Kaplan.
For Ernst, Lübcke was not a nameless representative of the state, "he was specifically responsible for what he saw as a failed refugee policy.
Not a word in connection with his racist ideology.
So not murder, but manslaughter.
Kaplan demands a "proportionate prison sentence" for Stephan Ernst.
Kaplan says his client planned and carried out the act together with Markus H.
In contrast to H., Ernst had done "educational work" and made full statements about his life story, his xenophobic and right-wing extremist views, right-wing extremist groups, the preparation of the crime and the crime itself;
he answered questions from the federal prosecutor's office and the Lübcke family and released four defense lawyers, some of them partially, from their duty of confidentiality.
"What else could Stephan Ernst have done?" Asks Kaplan.
Ernst, the "foreigner hater"
Stephan Ernst looks back on a ruined life.
Kaplan describes his childhood as a »hell of violence, fear and loneliness«, not as an excuse, as he emphasizes, but rather as an explanation for Ernst's »deficits and breaks and the violence that emanates from him«.
Ernst's childhood was shaped by his alcoholic, flogging father, for whom he felt a mixture of "pity, hate and love," as Kaplan says.
He took over the "hatred of foreigners" from his father.
It was their common cause, like other parents play soccer with their children, their "very special father-son thing."
An inhuman, perfidious hobby.
Stephan Ernst sits next to his lawyer and cries.
As a "foreigner hater," as Kaplan calls him, Ernst set fire to a house in which several Turkish families lived;
nobody got hurt.
He was 15 years old then.
At 19, he stabbed a Turkish imam;
the man barely survived.
Ernst deposited a pipe bomb between containers in which asylum seekers were.
For this he went to prison.
One unpacks, the other grins
After his imprisonment, Ernst found a home in the Kassel neo-Nazi scene, joined the NPD and supported the "Autonomous Nationalists".
From 2009 onwards, Ernst concentrated on his family and his work, says Kaplan.
Until Markus H., an old friend of the scene, came back into his life.
With him he went to the rifle club and secretly into the forest for target practice;
Weapons and armament played a major role in their lives, and together they supposedly wanted to arm themselves against the threat of Islamization.
Another perfidious hobby.
According to Kaplan's description, Ernst and H. radicalized themselves together.
And now in court, in the dock?
"Some of them talk, answer questions and show remorse," says Kaplan.
"The other is silent, grinning and provoking."
Kaplan asks the Senate to take into account how different his client and co-defendant Markus H. behave when reaching a verdict.
He recalls the curious appearance of chairman Thomas Sagebiel on the first day of the trial, who addressed Stephan Ernst directly with the words: "Don't listen to your defense counsel, listen to me." A "repentant confession" pays off in perspective always off.
"Use your best chance, maybe it's your only one."
At the time, his client listened to him, his defense lawyer, but also to the chairman.
"He's done everything he can," Kaplan says.
"More is not possible."
"An impudence"
Yes, there is more.
At the end of his lecture, Kaplan turned to the joint plaintiffs.
First, it is about Ahmed I, who was seriously injured with a knife from behind on January 6, 2016.
The act is similar to the attack that Ernst carried out on the Imam.
Ahmed I. did not come to court.
Kaplan addresses his contribution on behalf of his lawyer Alexander Hoffmann: "Mr. Ernst has nothing to do with your injury." Therefore, he should be acquitted of the alleged murder of Ahmed I.
Hoffmann countered after the hearing: "In view of the fact that Ernst refused to answer any inquiries about that January 6, 2016 from us and the court, that's a cheek."
Kaplan also addressed a few words to the Lübcke family.
During the trial they urgently asked Stephan Ernst to tell them what happened that night on their terrace in Istha and how it could have come to this.
The promise of his client to answer questions, so Kaplan, does not end today, not on the day the judgment is announced, not when the judgment becomes final.
"Herr Ernst's promise is valid for the rest of his life."
He hopes, says Kaplan, that the answers Ernst gave to the relatives in the process would help them deal with the pain.
"We have no doubt that he was telling you the truth, the whole truth, about the last few seconds of your husband and father's life."
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