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The Basel-Stadt canton appeals court has to re-evaluate the case of a drug addict who died in December 2013 after torture and a heroin overdose. The Federal Supreme Court has approved a complaint from the Basel prosecutor’s office.
Consequently, the appellate court decision of January 30, 2019 will be overturned. The case will be referred back to the lower court for re-evaluation, according to the federal court ruling published Wednesday.
Willful or negligent homicide?
The reason for the complaint by the Basel Prosecutor’s Office was that in the event of the death of a drug addict, the court of appeal handed down more lenient sentences than the lower court and did not consider that the intentional homicide had been committed. He sentenced a 31-year-old drug addict to a prison term of 8 years and 6 months for deprivation of liberty, lack of emergency aid and negligent murder. In May 2016, the criminal court handed down a 10-year prison sentence for the main culprit, including for intentional homicide.
The appeal court acquitted an accomplice, also a drug addict, of the crime of intentional homicide and ordered his imprisonment for deprivation of liberty and lack of emergency assistance for 6 years. The criminal court had sentenced him to a prison term of 8 years and three months for, among other things, intentional homicide.
The mother of the main aggressor, who was also a drug addict, received a 2-year prison sentence from the appeal court for complicity in the deprivation of liberty and lack of emergency assistance. The criminal court had imposed a higher prison sentence at 5 years for assisting in the intentional homicide and deprivation of liberty.
Corpse stored in a box and tortured
The Supreme Federal Court concludes that the main culprit, by creating an incalculable risk of death and a pronounced indifference to the life and physical integrity of the victim, evidently accepted the fact that the homicide was committed.
Thus, the lower instance wrongly considered that the volitional element of the subjective fact was absent. Her conclusion on the contingent lack of intention turns out to be contrary to federal law, it says in the ruling.
After two days of torture, a 38-year-old drug addict died in December 2013 in an apartment on St. Johanns-Ring in Basel. According to previous press reports, two junkies tied up the man, beat him, strangled him with wire and burned him. They wanted him to confess through abstinence. The main culprit accused the victim of stealing drugs.
When the victim’s health deteriorated, the main culprit gave him an overdose of street heroin. A few minutes later, the victim died. The men stored the body in a box on the terrace for several weeks. The main culprit also cut the body several times and partially set it on fire.
