Baden District Court imposes 17 years for drowning wife
Published: Friday, Jun 14th 2024, 17:40
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On Friday, the District Court of Baden found a 49-year-old man guilty of murdering his wife. He was given a prison sentence of 17 years. The verdict is not yet final.
The accused must pay the victim's two children, parents and siblings compensation totaling CHF 200,000. He is also liable to pay compensation for the consequential costs of the crime, such as therapy. The verdict can be appealed to the High Court of the Canton of Aargau. The man is already serving an early sentence.
The accused drowned his 41-year-old wife in the bathtub in the family home in Bergdietikon AG in the early hours of September 25, 2022. The crime was triggered by a cell phone photo of his wife having sex with another man.
The Swiss man confessed to the crime, but claimed that he had acted in an excusable emotional state. The central issue in court was the classification of the crime as manslaughter, intentional homicide or murder. Depending on the classification, the law provides for very different penalties.
The court now judged the crime to be murder, which requires, among other things, particular ruthlessness or cruelty. It thus followed the prosecutor's request, who had demanded 18 years. The defense lawyer had requested eight years for manslaughter.
He knew about the affair
The court had to deal with two questions in particular, said the presiding judge in the oral reasons for the verdict: "Were there relationship problems?" and "Did the accused know about his wife's affair before the crime?".
The accused had denied both. He had led a harmonious marriage until the end and only found out about his wife's cheating when he saw the picture.
To the outside world, the couple actually kept up the façade of an intact marriage. On the one hand, according to the court, this was because of the children; on the other hand, both wanted to prevent a loss of image, and cultural reasons also played a role: The Swiss couple both came from Albanian cultural backgrounds.
However, based on all the evidence and circumstantial evidence, the court had "no reasonable doubt" that there had been problems and that he had known about the affair. In the months leading up to the crime, he meticulously monitored the woman. The fact that the woman announced the afternoon before the crime that she wanted her own apartment alerted the accused.
No emotional state of emergency
The psychiatric expert had denied the emotional state of emergency required to qualify as manslaughter and the court did not consider this to be the case either. However, the emotional state of the accused that night had been taken into account in the sentencing, as had his confession, his cooperation in the proceedings and his credible remorse and insight.
The court was convinced that the accused had acted "with direct intent to kill" when he pushed the woman's head under the water in the bathtub until she stopped moving. The circumstances made it clear: "You have committed murder," said the judge, addressing the defendant directly.
Agonizing death
He had used "massive force" on the woman, who fought back but had no chance against the physically far superior man. She suffered an "extremely agonizing death".
According to the court, the accused acted for selfish reasons, out of jealousy, resentment and because he wanted to punish his wife. He was unable to accept that she had turned to another man. According to the court, there were no financial motives, as the accuser claimed.
The court described the behavior after the crime, when the defendant laid false tracks to fake the woman's suicide, as "particularly unscrupulous". The man's culpability was very great.
The circumstances of the crime were also extremely serious, said the judge. He had drowned the woman in the bathtub in the middle of the night "while the children slept next door". The children, who now live in a foster family, had lost their mother "out of nowhere" and their father had also been gone for a long time.
©Keystone/SDA
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