Another day which did not move the trial forward in any way.

Today the court had once again summoned expert witness Prof. Leygraf (see the report of 11 January 2017). Based on a motion by the Wohlleben defense, the presiding judge spent about two hours summarizing for Leygraf the statements by accused and witnesses in court on Carsten Schultze and on the crimes he is charged with. The Wohlleben defense stated that it was planning to add to the information given to the expert, but needed additional time to prepare. Accordingly Leygraf will have to come to Munich again next week.

It cannot be claimed that this trial day has moved the trial forward in any way – above all since the statements by accused and witnesses on Schultze conformed very largely to the information Leygraf had already based his report on. It seems that the expert shared this assessment as he made hardly any notes of what he was told. Continue reading →

Prof. Saß continues presenting his expert opinion

The further presentation of the expert opinion by Prof. Saß was delayed once more, again due to motions for reconsideration by Zschäpe’s assigned counsel. However, the expert witness was able to continue after the lunch break.

In addition to the facts he had presented yesterday, he stressed Zschäpe’s ability to conduct camouflage and to convcingly portray alias roles.

In conclusion, he found that Zschäpe’s personality contained dissocial or antisocial, as well as histrionic tendencies, but that there was nothing pointing towards a psychiatric disorder which could call into doubt Zschäpe’s competency.  Continue reading →