How did the newborn die that was thrown into a garbage can by its mother in Regensburg at the end of 2020? Unexplained. Now the prosecutor and defense attorney held their pleadings.
Regensburg – Silently and largely motionless, a 25-year-old woman in Regensburg has so far followed the trial that is being brought to her before the regional court for the killing of her newborn child. She also passed on one last word.
The prosecutor on Thursday pleaded manslaughter and a six-year prison sentence. The woman’s two defense lawyers were demanding a suspended sentence for negligent homicide.
It is undisputed: The woman gave birth to a girl on Christmas Day 2020 at lunchtime in the bathroom of an apartment in Regensburg. According to the coroner, the newborn was healthy and lived at least half an hour or an hour. What the mother then did remained unclear in the course of the process. At some point she packed the baby – still alive or already dead – with towels in a plastic bag and this in turn with rubbish in a bag. She put the bag in a garbage can in front of the house.
According to the autopsy report, the child died from suffocation or hypothermia, or a combination of both. The prosecutor is convinced that the 25-year-old – a German citizen – killed the newborn. The motive was “blatant selfishness”.
The woman, who comes from a difficult family background and temporarily lived without a permanent residence, had only recently found a place to stay in a shared apartment and denied the pregnancy to the roommates, said the prosecutor. She didn’t want to be seen as a liar and lose the room. Objectively, these are base motives. In the indictment, the prosecutor had accused the woman of murder.
However, he explained in his plea, the woman was not subjectively aware of this. When she killed the baby, she did not realize that it would be viewed as a reprehensible act in society. Because of this, the prosecutor moved away from the murder charge.
Defense lawyers followed the version told by the woman right after the baby was born. After the flatmates noticed the blood in the bathroom at the time, the woman first spoke of a stillbirth and then stated that she thought the baby was dead. She later told the police that too. The defense lawyers assumed that the woman mistakenly believed the child to be dead and classified the incident – putting the supposedly dead child in a bag and in the garbage can – as negligent homicide.
The judge, defense attorney and public prosecutor had discussed in detail with the forensic doctor and two gynecologists whether it was possible to believe a breathing newborn was actually dead for about an hour. The gynecologists said that it happens that a newborn does not cry or move immediately after delivery – but then the doctors intervened immediately. In this respect, they had no empirical values for a longer period of time.
The psychiatric expert had classified the accused as fully culpable – despite the stressful situation caused by the birth and a slightly below average intelligence with a value of 74. The woman already has an older child who is living with a foster family. The presiding judge Michael Hammer had pointed out in the course of the process that a conviction for manslaughter in a less serious case or for negligent homicide was conceivable. The verdict is expected on Friday. dpa
