Prosecutor demands over 18 years for poisoner
Published: Thursday, Dec 21st 2023, 11:20
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In the second-instance trial of a poisoner in Bern, the public prosecutor's office demanded a harsher sentence on Thursday. The man should spend 18 years and six months behind bars, is the demand.
At first instance, the defendant was sentenced to 14 years' imprisonment. In her plea on Thursday, the public prosecutor spoke not only of murder, but of an elimination murder that the man had committed.
The computer scientist wanted to get rid of his wife because he had a new lover. Instead of facing the conflict of separation or divorce, he had cowardly pressed the "delete button".
Months before the crime, he had researched drugs that lead to death in high doses and ordered them. The man had installed a browser on his computer that is usually used for surfing the darknet.
Watching the death throes
Furthermore, the man had callously watched his wife's four-day death throes and had not said a word to the doctors that he had given her a high dose of a gout medication in a coffee.
Instead, the man had flirted with his new flame. After the crime, the man had lied "so much that the beams bent" and acted "mercilessly selfishly", the public prosecutor explained. The conduct before and after the crime must have an aggravating effect on the sentence.
However, the defense lawyer emphasized to the High Court that a 14-year prison sentence was long enough for the man, who was in poor health. His client accepted the guilty verdict for murder because the man, who suffers from memory problems, had no better explanation for himself. He could no longer remember many things correctly and was unsure whether something had happened one way or another.
Memory disorders
The convicted man suffers from limbic encephalitis, a disease of the central nervous system. In addition to memory disorders, this was also accompanied by changes in character, the defense lawyer stated. It is no longer possible to reconstruct whether the illness, which was latent at the time of the crime, had an effect on the man's behavior.
His client accepts the first-instance conviction for murder and accepts responsibility for the crime as far as he is able. The sentence of 14 years imposed by the Bern-Mittelland Regional Court should not be increased, according to the defense lawyer's motion.
The High Court will announce its verdict later this afternoon.
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