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Karlsruhe / Augsburg (dpa / lby) - After a worker was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of a colleague, the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) partially overturned the judgment.

The Augsburg district court sentenced the then 34-year-old defendant in February after the man admitted to having killed his 24-year-old work colleague in an argument.

The BGH does not fundamentally criticize the guilty verdict, but the statements of the Augsburg jury court on the culpability of the accused are inadequate.

Another criminal chamber of the regional court in Augsburg now has to renegotiate the murder case (Az. 1 StR 329/20).

The accused electrician and the victim were both Poles who lived in residential containers on the premises of a company in Neusäß near Augsburg.

There the dispute broke out on February 1, 2019 at night, as a result of which the perpetrator hit his colleague with a weight plate, almost completely cut off his head with a knife and stabbed the dying person.

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The defendant's defense lawyers had only classified the crime as manslaughter and pleaded for a seven-year prison sentence.

After the murder sentence, they appealed to the BGH in Karlsruhe.

The judges there now recognized that the man could possibly have been guilty of reduced culpability in the bloody act, which was excluded in the Augsburg judgment.

The BGH referred to the strong alcoholism of the man in the bloody act and to the fact that the later victim had also insulted the man in the dispute.

In addition, shortly before the crime, the accused's wife informed him that she wanted to separate.

The BGH recommends that the interaction of these factors in the new process be clarified with the help of an additional psychiatric expert.

Decision of the Federal Court of Justice