Bremgarten court finds parents guilty of intentional homicide
Published: Friday, Sep 13th 2024, 11:50
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On Friday, the District Court of Bremgarten AG found the parents of a three-year-old child guilty of intentional homicide. They had killed their severely disabled daughter in May 2020. The court handed down prison sentences of eight years each.
The judgments are not yet legally binding. They can be appealed to the High Court of the Canton of Aargau.
On the evening of 6 May 2020, the accused in Hägglingen AG sedated their severely cerebrally disabled three-year-old daughter with ecstasy in a bottle and then suffocated her by covering her airways. A few months earlier, they had unsuccessfully tried to kill the child with sleeping pills.
The court also found the 32-year-old woman and the 34-year-old man guilty of attempted intentional homicide. The man who had procured the ecstasy also received a conditional fine of 20 daily rates of CHF 110 for violating the Narcotics Act. The parents, who come from Germany, will have to leave Switzerland for ten years after serving their sentences.
The 52-year-old grandmother of the child was acquitted of the charge of aiding and abetting. The court awarded her satisfaction and compensation. She had not done enough to prevent her daughter and her partner from committing the crime, said the presiding judge. However, this was "at most of moral relevance, but not of criminal relevance".
Court must classify crime legally
In general, it is not up to the court to "conduct an ethical and moral discourse on what a life worth living is", said the judge during the oral explanation of the three unanimous court rulings. The court had to apply the law and legally classify the act. The law is based on the fact that every human life is of equal value and equally worthy of protection.
The court acknowledged that the parents had been through a lot with their seriously ill child. It was understandable that they had reached their limits and were at the end of their tether, that they had felt despair, frustration and anger. However, it is not understandable that they did not accept more support and instead killed the child.
Neither murder nor manslaughter
The court did not follow either the prosecution or the defense in its qualification of the crime. The prosecution had demanded a conviction for murder and a sentence of 18 years. The child had been a nuisance to the parents and they had wanted to get rid of it.
The defense lawyers had argued that the parents had wanted to relieve their daughter of her suffering out of love and compassion. They had acted under severe emotional stress. They pleaded for manslaughter and a partially suspended prison sentence of three years. Neither argument convinced the court.
A prerequisite for manslaughter is great emotional distress in the sense of a prolonged chronic emotional state of emergency from which there appears to be no other way out than killing. This was not given in the sense of the law - even if the court acknowledged the parents' great suffering and state of emergency.
On the other hand, the particular ruthlessness required to qualify as murder was not present either. The defendants had credibly explained that they wanted a pleasant death for their daughter and trusted that this would be possible with ecstasy. There was no evidence that the child died in agony.
It is true that the child's dependence on its parents could also be an indication of unscrupulous behavior. However, the motives for an act are of decisive importance. The court was convinced that the accused were not overburdened with the care of the child, but rather with the emotions triggered by the situation.
Low risk of relapse
A homicide entails expulsion from the country. However, the court classified the risk of recidivism for both defendants as low. It therefore considered an expulsion of ten years to be appropriate. The public prosecutor had demanded 15 years, the defense lawyers had requested a waiver.
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