Criminal Liability of Third Parties with Regard to Free-Responsible Suicide: New Developments in the German Jurisdiction

Abstract

‘There is no doubt that the sentence administered justice in the concrete case, but at the same time it opened the way for many future wrong decisions in this area.’*2 These were the words with which former law professor Rudolf Schmitt reviewed the judgement of the Federal Court of Justice as to the criminal liability of third parties in the context of free-responsible suicide in the Wittig case. His pessimistic prediction did not remain valid for long. Quite to the contrary, it seemed that the judgement remained without supporters until 2016. In that year, the regional courts of appeal of Hamburg and Berlin decided to open a trial based on it.*3 The district court of Hamburg and of Berlin delivered judgements in the fi rst instance in late 2017 and early 2018, respectively. This paper is about these new developments within German jurisdiction. After a brief overview of the basics of suicide and German criminal law (in Section 2., the Wittig case (in Section 3.) and the two recent cases (in sections 4. and 5.) are presented. The paper ends with a conclusion and thoughts on the future (6.).