Over the course of our lives we meet many people. For all sorts of reasons, some of them become our closest friends and others our bitter enemies. Yet we never stop to think that one day we might suffer at the hands of a friend. Sometimes envy and malice hide behind the mask of friendship. Such relationships not infrequently turn into hostility driven by hatred and revenge, or by the pursuit of material gain.
Leonid (name changed) came to our law firm. The young man was accused of causing bodily harm to his friend Konstantin (name changed); under German law he was charged under § 223 of the German Criminal Code (Strafgesetzbuch, StGB) — Körperverletzung, i.e. bodily harm. This provision carries a prison sentence of up to 5 years or a fine. The young man told us his story.
Leonid and Konstantin had once been good friends, but in recent years the two young men had hardly been in touch, and contact only picked up again when Leonid decided to move to Berlin, where Konstantin had been living for a long time. When Konstantin learned that his friend was moving to his city, he was the first to get in touch and offered to help organise the move. Later he also helped the young man settle in Berlin and deal with matters concerning his residence permit, as Leonid was in the country with refugee status. Over the years, however, Konstantin had changed a great deal — he was no longer the person Leonid had once known. Even so, they kept in touch, and Leonid, who did not turn down the help on offer, gladly took Konstantin's advice. Until one day Konstantin announced that Leonid owed him a certain sum of money for the help he had provided.
To say that Leonid was surprised would be an understatement. He simply had not expected such a turn of events. True, he had long noticed that Konstantin had changed during the years they were out of touch, but in Leonid's view they were still friends. Moreover, Konstantin had offered his help himself, and there had never been any talk of payment. As a result, the two fell out. Leonid insisted that there had never been any such agreement and that he therefore had no intention of paying Konstantin, while Konstantin stubbornly maintained the opposite and even kept some of Leonid's belongings that were in his flat as security, refusing to hand them over until Leonid had paid the full amount. Over time the conflict escalated, which ultimately led to the incident that evening and the subsequent accusation of bodily harm.
According to Leonid, that evening he and an acquaintance went to Konstantin's home to finally collect his belongings and settle the matter amicably. Nobody was at home, but since they knew exactly where Konstantin liked to spend his evenings, they headed to a bar in a nearby street. And they were right — Konstantin was indeed there. Leonid held out his hand in greeting, and Konstantin returned the greeting. During the handshake, however, Konstantin suddenly asked our client whether he had brought the money, pulling him towards himself very forcefully. Leonid reflexively pulled his hand back, and Konstantin lost his balance and fell back into the armchair he had been sitting in. Our client did not notice whether Konstantin had hit anything as he fell; he turned around at once and headed for the exit. Konstantin ran after Leonid in a rage and grabbed him by the shoulder, and the next moment Leonid's acquaintance, who had come into the bar with him, was already trying to separate the two former friends. That was the version Leonid told us, and we were inclined to believe him.
The lawyer explained to the client carefully and in detail how the accusation against him could be refuted. To build a defence strategy, however, it was first necessary to inspect the investigation file (Akteneinsicht) and examine the statements of other people — above all those of Konstantin himself, who was both the injured party and a witness in the proceedings. When the lawyer received the file, an interesting picture emerged, fundamentally different from the one Leonid had described to us. According to Konstantin, our client had come into the bar for no reason and, without any provocation, head-butted him straight in the face, causing him to lose his balance, fall and briefly lose consciousness. When he came round, Leonid and his acquaintance had already gone. Medical certificates were also attached to the file, documenting a mild concussion and a fractured nasal bone.
In cases involving physical altercations, questions such as who started it, whether it was self-defence or an attack, which side provoked the other, and further details play a considerable role — aspects that are of great importance from a legal point of view.
That is why it was important to discuss everything thoroughly with the client before the trial (Hauptverhandlung), to go through the events chronologically, to explain how the hearing itself and the examination would proceed, and to prepare him for possible questions from the judge and the public prosecutor. The lawyer also advised the client to tell his story in a restrained way and to keep the judge's attention focused solely on the actual charge, without over-embellishing the background.
On the day of the trial, the lawyer went over the facts with the client once more. It later turned out that the injured party tried to put on something of a show in court, attempting to convince the court staff that our client was putting heavy pressure on him and that he, as the injured party, urgently needed protection. He did not come in through the main entrance but was escorted to the hearing by court staff. As our client later described him, he was someone who litigates against anyone and everyone; this trial was by no means his first experience of the kind. Leonid's assessment was to be confirmed at the hearing itself. But more on that later.
Once all the formalities were completed — the reading of the indictment and the calling of all participants in the proceedings — the judge turned to our client, the defendant, to give him the opportunity to make a statement or to remain silent. We were, of course, prepared to testify. As the lawyer had advised, Leonid briefly outlined the background and then the evening of the incident itself, concentrating solely on what mattered. He then gave the judge and the prosecutor the opportunity to ask him questions. This proved to be an almost ideal and highly advantageous approach, as the judge could assess the defendant's statement against the fact that he did not get lost in side issues but spoke clearly and to the point.
With that, the client had done his part well. Now the task was to expose the injured party. Our job was to draw the court's attention to the contradictions in the statements the injured party had made at the pre-trial stage. The lawyer had studied these statements closely beforehand, found several critical points and prepared an extensive list of questions designed to unsettle the injured party, make him insecure and thereby raise doubts in the judge's mind about the credibility of his testimony at the hearing.
After the defendant has been heard, the judge decides the order in which the witnesses are examined. In this case, they were the injured party himself and Leonid's acquaintance, who had been present in the bar that evening. The judge called the injured party first, probably so as not to burden the uninvolved witness with responsibility.
It was clear from the injured party's testimony that he was keen to see our client convicted so that he could later claim damages. His testimony seemed rather contrived — one got the impression that he had watched TV shows or films about lawyers and now wanted to shine with the "knowledge" he had picked up there. He delivered very general, almost rehearsed-sounding phrases in a theatrical manner and kept turning to the judge with questions, which only got in the way. Once the injured party has given his account, the rules of criminal procedure give the right to ask questions first to the judge, then to the prosecutor and finally to the defence lawyer.
The lawyer's first aim was to break through the witness's guard and concentration and thereby obtain truthful statements from him. Before moving on to the key questions, the lawyer began with neutral questions only indirectly related to the case, so that in answering them the injured party would back himself into a corner and become entangled in contradictions. And the lawyer succeeded brilliantly. For example, the injured party floundered when it came to the amount our client allegedly owed him for his help — he could not name an exact figure, which everyone involved noticed. To the lawyer's next question, whether he had been drunk that evening, he replied that he had drunk a third of a bottle of vodka and several glasses of beer but had felt fine, since that was not much for him. The lawyer then asked how often the injured party drank and whether he was dependent on alcohol, at which point he became downright angry, turned to the judge for support and finally admitted that yes, he did drink, but felt perfectly fine doing so. Further inconsistencies emerged in his account of the incident itself. According to his statement in the pre-trial proceedings, he had lost consciousness immediately after the blow and remembered nothing; now, however, he claimed to have seen when and how our client fled the bar. The injured party later tried to correct himself by saying that he had lost consciousness for only a few seconds. But it was already too late: the judge already had doubts about the credibility of his testimony.
In this way the lawyer managed to corner the injured party and, given the contradictions in his statements, achieve the desired result — namely that the judge began to doubt his testimony. The testimony of the injured witness clearly contradicted the objective evidence secured by the police at the scene. As a side effect, the judge, now doubting the truth of the injured party's version, went on to ask him further questions, which confused him even more. The prosecutor later asked the same questions.
Of course, the injured party had in fact suffered certain injuries, as the medical certificates showed. For a lawyer, however, the decisive question is whether those injuries were caused by a blow from our client or whether, for example, he fell on his own because he was drunk or got into a fight with someone else later on. In this case there was no direct evidence that it was our client who had caused the injuries, while the judge could no longer trust the injured party's version and therefore could no longer rely on it as witness evidence.
Finally, the judge adjourned the hearing, asked everyone to leave the courtroom, and a so-called Rechtsgespräch (a legal discussion between the court and the parties) took place between the lawyer, the prosecutor and the judge. On the basis of the examination carried out, the judge said that he was inclined towards an acquittal and heard the views of the prosecutor and the lawyer. In the end, everyone agreed that the evidence was not sufficient for a conviction, as it could not be established and proven that the client had caused the injuries. Everyone was then called back into the courtroom, and the judge gave the floor for closing statements first to the prosecutor and then to the lawyer. The court then withdrew to deliberate and shortly afterwards announced the acquittal (Freispruch). The criminal proceedings against our client were thus closed under § 170 Abs. 2 of the German Code of Criminal Procedure (Strafprozessordnung, StPO), since his conduct did not constitute an offence or could not be proven.
Although charges had been brought and criminal proceedings initiated by the public prosecutor's office, although many facts spoke against our client, and although at the pre-trial stage the prosecution had believed the injured party rather than our client, the lawyer managed to turn the situation around at the trial itself, to present a different picture and to objectively expose the weaknesses in the injured party's testimony. Above all, he succeeded in conveying this view to the court and the prosecution and thereby winning the case for our client. With this in mind, we would once again advise you to always turn to a defence lawyer in good time — it can protect your future.
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