Another wasted trial day

The first witness today was the CEO of the Jena Local Mass Transit company, who once again reported that there was no small wooden hut at the tram stop in Jena-Winzerla. Of course, his statement will be without relevance as the victim of the attack has now reported that he had indeed been pushed into a wooden hut, but in a nearby allotment to which he had fled from the tram stop (see the report of yesterday). The Wohlleben defense pretended like nothing had changed, asking the witness for the names of tram drivers who had frequented the tram stop in 1998 to 2000. The victim and his friend, who had managed to flee and call the police, will testify in the week of 7 November.

Next witness today was victim’s counsel Hardy Langer – he had recently submitted newspaper articles in order to help restart stalled police investigations concerning statements by Böhnhardt and Mundlos on possible further gunshots fired by them (see the report of 1 September 2016) and concerning the attack in Winzerla. The articles were read out yesterday and today, Langer confirmed that the copies he had sent in had been true copies of the originals.

The court rejected another motion for evidence brought by the Wohlleben defense, this time calling for the testimony of a Swiss police officer, after having read out the officer’s investigation report. The defense had again aimed to call into question the chain of custody of the Ceska murder weapon. However, the officer’s report had shown that she would not have had anything relevant to report anyway.

The Wohlleben defense reacted by challenging the judges for alleged bias – it seems that a tradition is developing of the defense answering every rejected motion for evidence with a challenge for bias. At least the court is now usually able to reject these unfounded challenges as such in time for the next regularly scheduled trial day.

There is another trial break next week, the trial will continue on Tuesday, 8 November 2016.