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.

It is likely that the court – which had actually been planning to conclude Leygraf’s involvement in the trial last week – is trying to prevent potential errors the Wohlleben defense may rely on on appeal. However, it already seems questionable whether the Wohlleben defense has a legally protected interest in Leygraf’s expert opinion – which after all concerned not Schultze’s believability, but only the question whether he should be tried and sentenced as an adult or as a minor.

Next week, both expert witnesses – Prof. Saß and Prof. Leygraf – will appear once more. In addition, the court – based on a motion by the Wohlleben defense – has summoned four police detectives from Jena to testify on their knowledge of Wohlleben’s ideology.