Report– Recent Case Law of theBundesgerichtshof(Federal Court of Justice) inStrafsachen(Criminal Law)

Abstract

Reporting on one year of theBundesgerichtshof's(BGH – Federal Court of Justice) jurisprudence in criminal affairs is always a delicate matter. We have decided to limit ourselves to report on a variety of cases, which are reported in the official records of the BGH and edited by members of the Court. The Court's official journal,Entscheidungen des Bundesgerichtshofs in Strafsachen(BGHSt), gives a fair mixture of decisions, which the judges themselves consider important enough to be included therein. However, the triage of decisions found there entails but a small portion of the BGH's work, chosen case-by-case without taking heed of producing a representative share. In order to come to a reasonable number of decisions to include in this report we had to leave aside several decisions notwithstanding their importance. We abstain from reporting on the case ofEl Motassadeq, who was charged with abetting in murder in 3066 cases in connection with the 9/11-attacks in the USA and was acquitted for lack of evidence. This case has been reported extensively elsewhere. We also desist from reporting on theGartenschlägercase, which deals with a special incident at the former German-German boarder. A survey of recent decisions of the BGH in the context of the former East-German regime was included in last year's report to the Annual for German and European Law (AGEL).