<\/b>One marches over the cuckoo\u2019s nest \u2013 psycho motion by the Zsch\u00e4pe defense.<\/b><\/p>\n
The high point \u2013 rather: the low point \u2013 of this trial day was marked by a motion of Zsch\u00e4pe defense counsel Grasel, who moved that psychiatrist Prof. Bauer, who had visited Zsch\u00e4pe on four days in detention, be heard as an expert witness to prove that due to a \u201csevere dependent personality disorder\u201d, Zsch\u00e4pe suffered from diminished responsibility at all relevant times. Grasel added that Bauer was able to appear in court next Thursday.<\/p>\n
This motion is the logical end point of Borchert\u2019s and Grasel\u2019s trial strategy, which tries to present Zsch\u00e4pe as unknowing, passive \u2013 and now also: dependent \u2013 appendage to B\u00f6hnhardt and Mundlos. So far, this strategy has clearly not borne fruit, and accordingly the defense now announces that Bauer will report what Zsch\u00e4pe had told him about \u201ccontinuing severe bodily assaults by Uwe B\u00f6hnhardt\u201d \u2013 no word on why anybody should believe such stories after Zsch\u00e4pe had not talked about such assaults in the year-long game of written questions and answers with the court.<\/p>\n
The motion is thus rather unlikely to succeed \u2013 in fact, one may ask whether it is really made in earnest \u2013 after all, if Zsch\u00e4pe is convicted of ten murders and several other violent crimes and is found to have been of diminished responsibility due to mental illness, this may well lead the court to sentence her to a lengthy prison sentence and additionally order her commitment in a psychiatric hospital \u2013 unclear whether this is a result Zsch\u00e4pe would prefer over life imprisonment or whether her counsel have in fact made her aware of this danger. On the other hand, from the point of view of the NSU\u2019s victims and their counsel, these questions are of course not all that relevant.<\/p>\n
It remains to be seen how the court will react to this motion: on the one hand, the presiding judge has shown so far that he is very interested in all of Zsch\u00e4pe\u2019s statements on the facts of the case, which would make it seem likely that they will wish to hear Prof. Bauer. On the other hand, expert witness Prof. Sa\u00df has already provided an extensive expert opinion on Zsch\u00e4pe, including on any reasons for dimished responsibility, finding that there are no such reasons. One way to convincingly deal with the issue would be to do as proposed by victim\u2019s counsel Doris Dierbach: the court could hear Prof. Bauer as a witness on what Zsch\u00e4pe had related to him and then ask Prof. Sa\u00df to comment on the relevance of these statements, if any, on his expert opinion.<\/p>\n
In other news, the Wohlleben defense brought another challenge for alleged bias against the judges who had yesterday rejected Wohlleben\u2019s challenge against the presiding judge and another judge. Today\u2019s challenge was based on an alleged lack of impartiality which would be gleamed from the reasoning of yesterday\u2019s decision \u2013 another instance of \u201cmuch ado about nothing\u201d.<\/p>\n
There are three more trial days next week before the court goes on a two-week break over Easter. It will likely be clear by next week whether the court will wish to hear Prof. Bauer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One marches over the cuckoo\u2019s nest \u2013 psycho motion by the Zsch\u00e4pe defense. The high point \u2013 rather: the low point \u2013 of this trial day was marked by a motion of Zsch\u00e4pe defense counsel Grasel, who moved that psychiatrist Prof. Bauer, who had visited Zsch\u00e4pe on four days in detention, be heard as an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allgemein"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1384"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1386,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1384\/revisions\/1386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}