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Monitoring in trial against Aria L.
On July 27, 2017, the revision hearing in the case of Aria L. took place before the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) in Karlsruhe, which was also observed by the Marburg Trial Monitoring Programme. After the oral hearing, the BGH dismissed the defendant’s appeal against the judgment of the Higher Regional Court of Frankfurt/Main dated July 12, 2016 (the Federal Prosecutor’s Office did not file an appeal).
The decision addressed several aspects: Firstly, it was ruled that deceased persons generally fall within the protective scope of the provision. Furthermore, for a "treatment" within the meaning of the provision, physical contact with the corpse is not required. Moreover, the head at least is considered a body part that can individually constitute a suitable object of the offense. However, the presiding judge emphasized that the status of other body parts still needs to be decided. Ultimately, posing with the heads and treating the heads as "trophies" also constitutes a serious degradation.
A commentary on the decision was published by Prof. Dr. Bock and Mr. Bülte in the online journal for Supreme Court Jurisprudence on Criminal Law. You can access it via the following link:
Stefanie Bock, Nicolai Bülte: "Criminal liability for desecration of corpses under the VStGB and the challenges of an international law-compliant interpretation" (HRRS 3/2018, 100-103)
You can find reports from the previous instance proceedings here.
Here is the link to the monitoring report of the revision proceedings: