One morning a father finds his two children dead in the apartment. The suspicion quickly turns against the mother. This confesses the act in court. Now the judges are giving their verdict.
Ulm – In the trial against a 37-year-old who is said to have suffocated her two children in her sleep, the verdict will be announced this Friday. The defendant expects a long prison sentence for the acts that she had admitted at the trial before the Ulm Regional Court.
The prosecution requested a prison sentence of 15 years for insidious murder in two cases, a spokesman for the court said. Since, despite existing doubts, it could not be ruled out with certainty that the now 37-year-old had suffered from a “severe suicidal syndrome” at the time of the crime and therefore mitigating circumstances were to be assumed, a life sentence would not be considered, it said.
Lawyer pleads for manslaughter
From the point of view of the woman’s defense lawyer, a prison sentence of no more than ten years would be appropriate. The lawyer for the 37-year-olds saw the murder characteristic of the treachery not fulfilled and pleaded for a condemnation of the act as manslaughter. He also pointed to mitigating circumstances at the time of the crime.
According to the indictment, the woman is said to have smothered her two three and six year old children in their sleep with the help of a gas on the night of April 25th this year. Police arrested the woman the morning after. She has been in custody since then. The father found the two children dead the morning after the alleged murders in the family’s apartment in Oberstadion in the Alb-Donau district.
In a statement from her lawyer, the defendant admitted the crime and said she deeply regretted it. As a motive, the woman stated that she was desperate and wanted to separate from her husband. According to the information, she saw no other way out and therefore decided to commit suicide and also to kill her children. dpa
