Eat or be eaten: Is cannibalism a pathology as listed in the DSM-IV?
July 2, 2004
This article discuses Armin Meiwes, a German with cannibal fantasies who hooked up with Bernd Brandes, a German with fantasies of being cannibalized. They both made their dreams come true and filmed themselves eating Brandes’ penis.
Initially, and at the time this column was written, Meiwes was convicted of manslaughter rather than murder and sentenced to a measly 8.5 years in prison. This caught my attention and I wondered what he’d been up to since his release. Well, according to Wiki - Meiwes was retried and convicted of murder in 2006.
So you enterprising cannibals out there will have to mark Germany off your lists.
Interesting. That murder conviction is a little troubling. Manslaughter is fine but can you really murder someone who wants you to kill them and eagerly cooperates with you in the act? It looks as if the authorities were worried that he might kill again and wanted to keep him behind bars as long as possible. There’s no evidence though that he’s a danger to the public as it seems as if he will only eat those who want to be eaten
Brandes passed out some time after having his dick cut off, after which Meiwes stabbed him to death. It wasn’t clear whether Brandes had agreed to that before, and it was established at the second trial that he had not.
IANAL but this smacks of double jeopardy to me. Does the German court system have safeguards concerning that? Would such apply if the case was in the US? It’s that line, In April 2005, a German court ordered a retrial after prosecutors appealed Meiwes’ sentence that jumps out at me. While defendants appeal their conviction and/or sentence all the time here, I have the impression prosecutors are out of luck if they are unhappy with a trial’s result.
They seem to have appealed on law not facts; that the allegations constituted a charge of murder not manslaughter. A US lawyer would be able to answer better, but I don’t think that was violative of double jeopardy.
I don’t know the correct answer here, but I agree with DesertDog … this sure enough looks like double jeopardy to me too … I say this because I’ve never heard of a case where the prosecution gets their conviction … and then appeals to try the suspect again, for the same act, in order to get a different (and better) conviction …
The devil might be in the details … double jeopardy generally means that if a suspect is acquitted, they can never be prosecuted for that exact crime again … thus preventing the prosecution from “shopping around” for a jury who’ll convict … the State gets one chance, and only one chance …
ETA: Thanks Merneith for chasing down this information …
Thanks for the link, Guinastasia, that’s incredible.
Someone posts in that thread that the guy left a will indicating that he knew what was about to happen to him. I wonder how the prosecutors got round that, it would seem to be proof that he did want to die.
I can’t speak to how German law defines manslaughter and murder, but generally in the United States, manslaughter would be a lesser-included offense of murder. A subsequent trial following a verdict on a greater or lesser included offense is not permitted. Obviously, a guilty verdict that’s been overturned is no longer a bar to retrial. But in the US, prosecutors cannot retry on a greater offense and the same set of facts. (It is possible to have a second trial with different facts – that is, convict on malicious wounding and then again on murder if the victim subsequently dies).
Can an indictment be appealed? If the charge is manslaughter and before a finding is given, can the State appeal asking that the Judge should have indicted for murder?
No. The judge doesn’t indict; a grand jury does. In many states (and, I believe, the Federal courts) the prosecution can file what’s called an interlocutory appeal before the case goes to the jury for deliberation and verdict. The prosecution would have to show that the judge made a pretrial or mid-trial decision (such as amending the charge on its own or on a defense motion) that was clearly wrong and would be to the prosecution’s detriment. Interlocutory appeals, which are fairly rare, are decided by an appellate court.
The principle “Ne bis in idem” - not twice for the same applies, as Wikipedia puts it, a principle of judical fairness to all modern countries.
In Germany, it’s Article 103 of the Basic law (similar to the US constitution). I’m not a lawyer, hence I’m citing Wikipedia.
Which is not suprising if you are reading an article that has been translated. E.g. the German Wikipedia article on Meiwes Armin Meiwes – Wikipedia states that on April 22nd, 2005, the BGH = Federal Court annulled the verdict, using the justification “a verdict of manslaughter only and not murder does not hold up to legal Review” and returned the whole thing to the state court in Frankfurt for a Re-Trial. (I used Wikipedia because finding that old free newspaper articles takes more time.) One can disagree with the Courts reasoning, but it was the higher court, who is tasked with reviewing cases from the lower (in this case, Landesgericht = State court), who decided it, not the same court, and not the prosecutor themselves.
I’m not a lawyer, I only read the newspaper columns by lawyers. The difference between Totschlag (manslaughter) and murder in German law has been hotly debated between lawyers for several Generations now, arguing that the differences are too thin, rely on outdated psychological models, are unfair to some types of People, and not useful in sentencing and the whole connected crimes.
Basically, as non-lawyer, Manslaughter is killing a Person with intent, but without aggravating factors that escalate it to murder. (Differing between killing with intent and without intent does make sense to most laypeople; differing between intent with gruesomeness and without … is a different type of distinction).
To Change from Totschlag to murder, one of the “murder criteria” must be met. Those are:
Group 1, mean/lesser motives. Necrophilia or more General, getting excited about killing, is one of those. (Obviously, People who like killing are even more dangerous than your Standard killer).
Group 2, reprehensible method. Killing sb. with great cruelty or with perfidity. (The classic example for that is: a man Comes home and finds his wife with his best friend in the bed together. He takes out his gun and shoots them. If they are awake, it’s manslaughter. If they are asleep, it’s perfidy and thus murder. This is one Point where a lot of abused women kill their husband in sleep because they don’t dare to when he’s awake).
Group 3: delict as aim: Killing sb. to cover up another crime.
As a layperson I would say that obviously under German law a Person is guilty of either one or the other, not both. So a prosecturo would have to decide whether to go for Totschlag as normal killing, or Murder because one of the criteria has been fulfilled.
Given the sexual component, I can see why the court thought that the Murder criteria was fulfilled. Given the ongoing discussion, and the Agreement of the victim before, I can see why the lower court wasn’t sure and went with Totschlag.
The Retrial in 2006 gave a verdict of murder (plus disturbing the peace of dead bodies, a seperate crime, which the court reasoned applied to eating a dead body) and a lifelong sentence was given out. The BGH, Federal Court, confirmed this in 2007. An Appeal to the Bundesverfassungsgericht (the constitutional court) against this was not accepted.
In 2013 Meiwes was in Kassel II, a social therapeutic prison. In a newspaper interview in 2013 he called his deed wrong and “completly abnormal”.
This applies presumbably also to a verdict that a higher court has vacated.