Deggendorf (dpa / lby) - After almost six months, the retrial of the violent death of a young woman could come to an end before the Deggendorf district court. After the trial against a 28-year-old had been delayed several times, the judges announced a verdict for this Monday. The defendant is charged with murder. The public prosecutor demanded a life sentence and a determination of the particular degree of guilt. The defense pleaded manslaughter.
The man killed his ex-girlfriend with numerous knife wounds in Freyung, Lower Bavaria, at the end of October 2016. In a first trial in 2017, he was finally sentenced to twelve years in prison for manslaughter by the Passau Regional Court. At that time, the charge was murder, but the judges could not prove beyond a doubt that the man stabbed his victim while he was already asleep - which would have meant the murder characteristic of malice.
In 2019, two witnesses who testified in favor of the accused in the first trial were convicted of making false statements. This made the retrial possible. Because: The Deggendorf judges did not rule out that their Passau colleagues would have pronounced a murder sentence in 2017 without the false statements.
