A civil chamber of the Darmstadt Regional Court on Wednesday refused to collect new evidence in the case of the convicted Andreas Darsow from Babenhausen in southern Hesse and ordered him to pay almost 70,000 euros.

The presiding judge said in her reasoning that there was no doubt about the defendant's guilt.

The chamber has no doubts about the correctness of the judgment and the assessment of the evidence in the criminal proceedings more than ten years ago.

"In the overall assessment they only allow one conclusion."

The convicted 52-year-old Darsow has been protesting his innocence for years and wants a retrial.

All attempts have failed so far.

According to Darsow's lawyer, Gerhard Strate, a new hearing of evidence in the civil proceedings could have been a possible lever for such a procedure.

"I thought as soon as I walked in, that doesn't feel good," said Darsow's wife calmly in a first reaction to the judge's verdict.

She wanted to call her imprisoned husband on Wednesday and tell him about the verdict.

The interpretation of the evidence is a "matter of opinion".

"We said that if it doesn't end positively today, it won't be the end." The aim is also to achieve a retrial with new information or reports.

The procedure offered a chance for a new criminal trial

For lawyer Strate, who also represented the Bavarian judiciary victim Gustl Mollath and Monika Böttcher, who was convicted of murdering her two daughters, the proceedings offered an opportunity for a new criminal trial.

The civil proceedings were not about the crimes, but about claims by the state of Hesse against Darsow.

Hesse wants the reimbursement of care costs for the then seriously injured, disabled daughter of a murdered couple.

For the state's lawyer, Thomas Pahl, it was clear on the first day of the hearing on March 9th that Darsow was convicted by a large amount of circumstantial evidence.

A possible collection of evidence would have involved a home-made silencer that is said to have been used in the murders.

The background to this are conflicting findings from the new defense reports and the indications given in the 2011 judgment about the silencer.

The regional court had condemned Darsow in 2011.

The Chamber saw it as proven that the German man ambushed his neighbor in April 2009 after a year-long neighborhood dispute over noise pollution and shot him.

According to the verdict, he then went into the house and shot the sleeping wife two bullets in the head - he also shot the disabled daughter.

She survived badly injured.

The presiding judge at the time: "The act was committed with an absolute will to destroy." The motive: Out of anger because of the noise, he wanted to wipe out an entire family.

All Strate's efforts to introduce possible new evidence into a new trial have so far failed.

In August 2019, the Kassel district court rejected a retrial, as did the Frankfurt Higher Regional Court in May 2020.

In October of the same year, the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe did not accept a constitutional complaint in the case for decision.