The Frankfurt Higher Regional Court has lifted the arrest warrants against six people in custody for attempted homicide because the jury chambers of the regional court have still not admitted the indictments and terminated the trials due to being overwhelmed.
Anna Sophia Lang
Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.
Follow I follow
In one case, four alleged perpetrators have been in custody for almost a year.
In July 2021, they are said to have fatally injured two people with knife wounds at the train station in Höchst after a dispute.
Prosecutors filed charges in January 2022.
In the second case, the accused have been in custody for nine months and more than a year.
The public prosecutor's office accuses one of attempted manslaughter and aggravated robbery, the other attempted manslaughter and dangerous bodily harm.
These charges were filed in January and February 2022.
Unreasonably long pre-trial detention
As the Higher Regional Court is now reporting, the cause is the considerable "structural overload with numerous detention cases, which can no longer be managed even with almost daily hearings," which the Presidium of the Regional Court was informed of in April.
So far no remedy has been found.
Accused persons would not have to put up with longer detention than is appropriate for the procedure, “because the state fails to fulfill its obligation to equip the courts in accordance with the constitution”.
Justice Minister Roman Poseck (CDU) announced that the lifting of the arrest warrants was "a bad signal in our constitutional state, which should stand for consistent criminal prosecution".
The regional court decided on Thursday to "clearly" relieve the two jury chambers.
As of January 1, three new permanent positions were assigned to the court, and ten new judges had been hired on probation since the beginning of the year.
"It is important to me to significantly strengthen the courts through additional positions," said Poseck.
"The Regional Court of Frankfurt am Main will also benefit significantly from this."