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Photo: Frank Rumpenhorst/ picture alliance/ dpa
In October 2019, a man had rammed a car ahead in the fast lane from behind so hard that the 22-year-old driver died at the wheel.
According to the investigation, he was traveling at around 230 kilometers per hour in the area of the accident site, where he was allowed to drive at a maximum of 100 km/h at the time.
Now the accident driver has to answer to the court again, as the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) announced in Karlsruhe.
The BGH overturned the conviction of the now 25-year-old defendant to a prison sentence of three and a half years.
The case now has to be retried by the regional court.
The Ingolstadt district court had convicted the man of a prohibited motor vehicle race resulting in death.
The defense attorneys had demanded an acquittal because they blamed the fatally injured driver for the accident.
Before the collision, he had switched to the left lane at a speed of 120 km/h.
The defendant and a co-plaintiff, who is seeking a harder sentence, namely manslaughter, had appealed against the judgment of the district court.
The Federal Court of Justice has now overturned this judgment, but left it with the findings on the external events of the crime, so that now only the intention of the perpetrator has to be renegotiated.
The fourth criminal senate of the Federal Court of Justice objected to the district court's judgment as being contradictory: The reasoning with which the district court affirmed a so-called risk intent in the context of the prohibited motor vehicle race was "not consistent" with the execution with which it on the other hand denied an intention to kill.
kha/hip/dpa
