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District Court of Munich
Photo: Matthias Balk / dpa
"Real lust for murder" is said to have been a motive for a then 17-year-old in Munich to have killed his sleeping 14-year-old girlfriend with a targeted stab in the heart.
As a court spokesman announced on Tuesday evening, Joshua M. received a youth sentence of eight years and nine months from the youth chamber of the Munich I Regional Court.
The court also reserved the right to order preventive detention;
this means that a court could later order the adolescent into preventive detention - in which case he would remain in prison after his sentence had been served.
The court used this opportunity because the experts had assumed that there was an extremely high risk of recurrence, even for the most serious acts of violence, a court spokesman said.
Malice and base motives
The chamber saw the murder characteristics of malice and base motives as given, so the 17-year-old at the time of the crime had deliberately bought the crime knife.
In addition, the 14-year-old was killed “in the supposedly safest place imaginable: sleeping in her own bed in her parents’ house”.
As a motive, the court recognized a whole bouquet of base motives in addition to lust for murder.
The Chamber considered the accused's confession in his favour.
However, the presiding judge accused the accused of temporarily abusing the eight-day trial as a show.
This show is now over, the court said.
The verdict is not yet legally binding.
The mother of the 14-year-old, who took part in the process as a joint plaintiff, found the girl dead in bed in October last year.
Her boyfriend, with whom she had spent the night in her children's room, had disappeared.
He was arrested without resistance around 24 hours after the crime.
The public prosecutor's office had demanded a youth sentence of eight years and ten months in their plea on Tuesday.
In addition, the prosecution had requested placement in a psychiatric hospital and an order for preventive detention.
The defense attorney, on the other hand, had only demanded a conviction for murder with a juvenile sentence of eight and a half years.
The hearing before the youth chamber took place behind closed doors.
mgo/AFP/dpa