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According to the BGH, the determination of culpability was "unsustainable"
Photo: Taylan Gökalp / picture alliance / dpa
The Berlin regional court has to renegotiate the rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl in the Rummelsburger Bucht in Berlin.
The Federal Court of Justice (BGH) in Karlsruhe complained in a ruling that the district court wrongly regarded the convicted person as fully culpable.
The man pulled the student into a bush, raped and strangled the student on the night of August 5, 2020 in the Friedrichshain district on a fallow land on a branch of the Spree.
According to expert reports, the man suffers from an organic brain personality disorder with impulse control disorders.
He was also under the influence of alcohol and drugs.
Based on his "ability to cover up the crime", the regional court nevertheless held him fully guilty and sentenced him to life imprisonment.
This determination of culpability was "unsustainable", as the BGH decided.
The district court did not take sufficient account of the influence of illness and drugs.
In addition, it only examined both influences individually and not in their interaction.
The BGH did not object to the findings on the course of events.
With its renewed examination of the culpability, the district court will now also have to decide in particular whether the man should possibly be placed in a psychiatric hospital.
File number: 5 StR 325/21
kim / AFP