Miewes Poll: Sentence for cannibalism
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Pure
Fiel a Verdad
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Here's a link and the first para from der Spiegel
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,415313,00.html
Armin Meiwes, the German cannibal who killed, sliced up and ate a Berlin computer engineer begging to be devoured, was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison on Tuesday. The sentence came following a retrial of a shocking case that gained worldwide attention because of its gory details.
Meiwes, a 44-year-old computer repair man, had originally been sentenced to 8 and a half years for manslaughter but that verdict was overturned by Germany's federal appeals court which deemed it too lenient and ordered him to be retried on a murder charge.
The judge ruled that Meiwes had killed to satisfy his sexual urges. The Frankfurt court ruling means Meiwes could be eligible for parole after serving a mandatory 15 years in jail.
Meiwes's defence lawyers had argued that he should face the lesser conviction of "killing on demand" -- a form of illegal euthanasia -- and said they planned to appeal against the new verdict. Legal experts have said the case presents the justice system with a dilemma because the victim, Bernd-Jürgen Brandes, had wanted to be eaten.
For witnesses at the trial, it was hard to imagine the quietly spoken, polite and surprisingly ordinary-looking Meiwes hanging up the victim's body from a meat hook in the slaughtering room he had set up in his home, disembowelling him and cutting him up into meal-sized portions ready for storage in his freezer.
Yet that is what he did, filming the process with a video camera in an orgy of gore that marked the culmination of an obsession with cannibalism since puberty. He defrosted Brandes portion by portion in the following months and turned him into gourmet meals. He kept the skull in a freezer and buried other parts in his garden.
"I wanted to eat him but I didn't want to kill him," said Meiwes during the four-month trial.
"He was close to me with every bite," Meiwes recalled, adding that Brandes had encouraged him to seek out other slaughter victims. "Bernd told me he didn't want to be on his own in the freezer for long," said Meiwes, who did indeed keep advertizing for fresh victims on the Internet until 18 months later, December 2002, when police arrested him after receiving a tip from a Web user.
Meiwes and Brandes had contacted each other through the Internet where Meiwes had been seeking "fit men for slaughter". They met in March 2001 in Meiwes's rambling, half-timbered house left him by his domineering mother in the central German town of Rotenburg.
Skip the next two paragraphs if you're squeamish. Brandes asked Meiwes to emasculate him and drank half a bottle of Schnapps and painkilling tablets to cope with the pain. Meiwes obliged and they both tried to eat Brandes's penis together.
After Brandes became unconscious from loss of blood, Meiwes took him to his slaughtering bench and -- this is the main reason for Monday's murder conviction which was widely expected -- killed him by cutting his throat with a butcher's knife.
"Everybody has right to decide about own life"
Meiwes told the court he regretted what he did. But he added: "Everybody has the right to decide themselves about their own life and their body." His lawyers pointed out that Brandes had in e-mails, Internet chat forums and telephone conversations clearly expressed his desire for his life to be ended, and for him to be "nullified".
Meiwes said he has written his memoirs in jail and wants to show people with similar fantasies "that it can never bring them fulfilment." Police estimate there are 8,000 to 10,000 people in Germany alone who are using Internet chat rooms to share fantasies about eating a person or being eaten.
Psychiatrists who examined Meiwes said he was severely disturbed but sane and fit to stand trial.
During the retrial, Meiwes told how he had fantasized about eating his schoolmates and how he would record televison documentaries about post-mortems. He would also barbecue dolls, and would form human limbs out of marzipan and eat them wedged in bread rolls. The fantasies became more intense after the death of his mother in 1999 left him alone in her large house where he began to surf the Internet.
cro/dpa/Reuters/AP
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,415313,00.html
Armin Meiwes, the German cannibal who killed, sliced up and ate a Berlin computer engineer begging to be devoured, was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison on Tuesday. The sentence came following a retrial of a shocking case that gained worldwide attention because of its gory details.
Meiwes, a 44-year-old computer repair man, had originally been sentenced to 8 and a half years for manslaughter but that verdict was overturned by Germany's federal appeals court which deemed it too lenient and ordered him to be retried on a murder charge.
The judge ruled that Meiwes had killed to satisfy his sexual urges. The Frankfurt court ruling means Meiwes could be eligible for parole after serving a mandatory 15 years in jail.
Meiwes's defence lawyers had argued that he should face the lesser conviction of "killing on demand" -- a form of illegal euthanasia -- and said they planned to appeal against the new verdict. Legal experts have said the case presents the justice system with a dilemma because the victim, Bernd-Jürgen Brandes, had wanted to be eaten.
For witnesses at the trial, it was hard to imagine the quietly spoken, polite and surprisingly ordinary-looking Meiwes hanging up the victim's body from a meat hook in the slaughtering room he had set up in his home, disembowelling him and cutting him up into meal-sized portions ready for storage in his freezer.
Yet that is what he did, filming the process with a video camera in an orgy of gore that marked the culmination of an obsession with cannibalism since puberty. He defrosted Brandes portion by portion in the following months and turned him into gourmet meals. He kept the skull in a freezer and buried other parts in his garden.
"I wanted to eat him but I didn't want to kill him," said Meiwes during the four-month trial.
"He was close to me with every bite," Meiwes recalled, adding that Brandes had encouraged him to seek out other slaughter victims. "Bernd told me he didn't want to be on his own in the freezer for long," said Meiwes, who did indeed keep advertizing for fresh victims on the Internet until 18 months later, December 2002, when police arrested him after receiving a tip from a Web user.
Meiwes and Brandes had contacted each other through the Internet where Meiwes had been seeking "fit men for slaughter". They met in March 2001 in Meiwes's rambling, half-timbered house left him by his domineering mother in the central German town of Rotenburg.
Skip the next two paragraphs if you're squeamish. Brandes asked Meiwes to emasculate him and drank half a bottle of Schnapps and painkilling tablets to cope with the pain. Meiwes obliged and they both tried to eat Brandes's penis together.
After Brandes became unconscious from loss of blood, Meiwes took him to his slaughtering bench and -- this is the main reason for Monday's murder conviction which was widely expected -- killed him by cutting his throat with a butcher's knife.
"Everybody has right to decide about own life"
Meiwes told the court he regretted what he did. But he added: "Everybody has the right to decide themselves about their own life and their body." His lawyers pointed out that Brandes had in e-mails, Internet chat forums and telephone conversations clearly expressed his desire for his life to be ended, and for him to be "nullified".
Meiwes said he has written his memoirs in jail and wants to show people with similar fantasies "that it can never bring them fulfilment." Police estimate there are 8,000 to 10,000 people in Germany alone who are using Internet chat rooms to share fantasies about eating a person or being eaten.
Psychiatrists who examined Meiwes said he was severely disturbed but sane and fit to stand trial.
During the retrial, Meiwes told how he had fantasized about eating his schoolmates and how he would record televison documentaries about post-mortems. He would also barbecue dolls, and would form human limbs out of marzipan and eat them wedged in bread rolls. The fantasies became more intense after the death of his mother in 1999 left him alone in her large house where he began to surf the Internet.
cro/dpa/Reuters/AP
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O'Mac
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I voted to give him a life sentence.
Let's face the harsh reality here. The man killed another man for sexual gratification. While it's understood that the victim gave consent and readily agreed to be killed and consumed, I don't think for a second that it becomes a justification for actually going through with the acts of murder and cannabalism. The real danger with allowing this behaviour to go unpunished, is that we slowly raise the bar (legally speaking) and thus invite more horrendous crimes to be comitted. If killing and eating someone who consents to the act because legal, than we now have a grey area involving the validity of consent itself. What if consent was given under duress? What if the victim was suffering from some a particular mental disorder (HIGHLY possible in this case, IMO)?
The punishment must fit the crime. In this case, life imprisonment is completely reasonable.
Let's face the harsh reality here. The man killed another man for sexual gratification. While it's understood that the victim gave consent and readily agreed to be killed and consumed, I don't think for a second that it becomes a justification for actually going through with the acts of murder and cannabalism. The real danger with allowing this behaviour to go unpunished, is that we slowly raise the bar (legally speaking) and thus invite more horrendous crimes to be comitted. If killing and eating someone who consents to the act because legal, than we now have a grey area involving the validity of consent itself. What if consent was given under duress? What if the victim was suffering from some a particular mental disorder (HIGHLY possible in this case, IMO)?
The punishment must fit the crime. In this case, life imprisonment is completely reasonable.
Tabea
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Because I am a law student I've read the case and would like to clear up a few legal points.
As Chris9 has already explained this was not a case of double jeopardy which is forbidden in Germany as well, of course. Meiwes himself appealed to the higher court. He said he was only guilty of killing on request of the deceased which carries a much lower sentence. But he didn't get sentenced for this because the main motive has to be the request of the other person. Meiwes motive though was to obtain a film for his sexual gratification later on.
In Germany for a killing to be classified as murder one of 7 additional criteria has to be fulfilled (e.g. cruelty). The criteria that was debated in this case was killing for sexual gratification. While the lower court ruled this wasn't fulfilled because Meiwes was not aroused during the killing the higher court decided that it is sufficient if the whole point of the killing is to produce a film for masturbation. The higher court also found that Meiwes had disturbed the peace of the dead and thus fulfilled another criteria for murder (to prepare for a subsequent crime).
Of course, the principle "nulla poena sine lege" (no punishment without law) is applied in Germany as well. It was not violated here. Meiwes got convicted of murder and disturbing the peace of the dead - not for cannibalism.
As Chris9 has already explained this was not a case of double jeopardy which is forbidden in Germany as well, of course. Meiwes himself appealed to the higher court. He said he was only guilty of killing on request of the deceased which carries a much lower sentence. But he didn't get sentenced for this because the main motive has to be the request of the other person. Meiwes motive though was to obtain a film for his sexual gratification later on.
In Germany for a killing to be classified as murder one of 7 additional criteria has to be fulfilled (e.g. cruelty). The criteria that was debated in this case was killing for sexual gratification. While the lower court ruled this wasn't fulfilled because Meiwes was not aroused during the killing the higher court decided that it is sufficient if the whole point of the killing is to produce a film for masturbation. The higher court also found that Meiwes had disturbed the peace of the dead and thus fulfilled another criteria for murder (to prepare for a subsequent crime).
EKVITKAR said:
Of course, the principle "nulla poena sine lege" (no punishment without law) is applied in Germany as well. It was not violated here. Meiwes got convicted of murder and disturbing the peace of the dead - not for cannibalism.
Netzach
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"drank half a bottle of Schnapps and painkilling tablets to cope with the pain"
Dude probably had blown his own liver at this point, let's face it. He was fucked from this point on.
Not that I'm wildly bummed about the verdict, a bit disconcerted by the reasoning behind it at most.
Dude probably had blown his own liver at this point, let's face it. He was fucked from this point on.
Not that I'm wildly bummed about the verdict, a bit disconcerted by the reasoning behind it at most.
Tabea
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Netzach said:
According to what I've read he had mainly drunk a lot of cough syrup. I don't know whether the half bottle of Schnaps and the 20 sleeping dragees he took would actually have killed him (he was still alive a couple of hours after he had taken them).
The video Meiwes made is supposed to show at one point that Brandes had changed his mind and was scared (Meiwes didn't notice).
Netzach
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Tabea said:
Committed, life. Maybe lots of long consecutives, 400 years or something. Possibly the chair, depending on the state, but unlikely - "fags killing one another" rarely is capital here unless someone's Versace or something, ah, justice.
Tabea
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Netzach said:
I always find those long sentences interesting. What is the point of them? Most people don't actually live several hundred years long.
In Germany you can also get only one life sentence. The judges don't seem to believe in several lives.
A life sentence here means the possibility of parole after 15 years.
Netzach
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Tabea said:
They're often pretty meaningless here, seems that people who should have them often walk to kill more people and people who got ratted out and have no one else to rat out with drug rumors sit around and rot.
I don't really understand the consecutives either. Maybe it's some fucked up way to say "no we really really really mean it."
To me, I don't really care about the punitive nor the reforming theories of incarceration, more one of segregation from the general society and keeping that person from doing what they do again. Assuming guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
Of course, people are biased, systems are biased, so you just have this amazing, racist, ineffective machine having no impact on violent crime.
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catalina_francisco
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