The trial day began with a longish discussion of Zsch\u00e4pe\u2019s three \u201cold\u201d defense counsel with their newly assigned colleague Grasel. Inter alia, it seems that they were discussing the seating order. Sturm, Stahl and Herr at first sat down at their usual seats and asked Grasel to take a seat at the edge of the Zsch\u00e4pe defense \u2013 Zsch\u00e4pe simply sat down next to Grasel.<\/p>\n
Grasel\u2019s first motion was that the trial be interrupted for three weeks in order to allow him to catch up with the trial. The court partially granted the motion, canceling all trial days for this week and shortening the two final weeks in July to two days each.<\/p>\n
This interruption was not legally necessary \u2013 as noted by the prosecution, Zsch\u00e4pe has \u201cthree additional defense counsel\u201d who are already up to speed. However, neither was the assignment of Grasel legally necessary after Zsch\u00e4pe\u2019s motion to have counsel Anja Sturm relieved was denied. It seems that the court\u2019s decision to assign was based on other motives, such as a hope that he might bring Zsch\u00e4pe to fulfill her announcement of maybe making a statement on some of the charges against her (which we still think unlikely) or as a precautionary measure in case the fight between Zsch\u00e4pe and the three original counsel becomes more heated again. Accordingly, granting Grasel the interruption may also be based on the hope that he will be able to establish himself accordingly within the defense.<\/p>\n
According to press reports, Grasel had stated that the defense was a \u201cmammoth task\u201d, but \u201cI think that, with the support of the court and the other colleagues, I will be able to deal with it.\u201d Whether the court had told him earlier that they would be inclined to grant a motion for interruption is unclear \u2013 similarly unclear is whether Grasel actually thinks that he will be up to speed within a few weeks.<\/p>\n
Of course, today\u2019s decision also throws further into disarray the court\u2019s witness program for the remaining weeks before the summer break. However, in the last weeks it often seemed like the court is not currently conducting the trial with full energy and is mostly trying to make it till the break. This impression is also based on the court\u2019s decision to only sit two days per week in June and early July with respect to Zsch\u00e4pe\u2019s mental exhaustion, without previously having heard the expert witness again as to her mental state. The right to a speedy trial, which the court often relies upon vis-\u00e0-vis victims\u2019 counsel, does not seem all that important at the moment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Zsch\u00e4pe\u2019s fourth defense counsel is granted a week to catch up The trial day began with a longish discussion of Zsch\u00e4pe\u2019s three \u201cold\u201d defense counsel with their newly assigned colleague Grasel. Inter alia, it seems that they were discussing the seating order. Sturm, Stahl and Herr at first sat down at their usual seats and […]<\/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-961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allgemein"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961","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=961"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":964,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961\/revisions\/964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsu-nebenklage.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}