German court: Compensation for child murderer

[August 04, 2011]  BERLIN (AP) -- A German court on Thursday awarded a man convicted of murdering an 11-year-old child euro3,000 ($4,290) in damages related to a police officer's threat of violence during an interrogation.

The Frankfurt state court ruled that 36-year-old Magnus Gaefgen deserved compensation for the deputy police chief's threat, made in an effort to get details about the missing boy in 2002. But the court rejected Gaefgen's claim that he suffered mental trauma as a result of that questioning, and ruled that he must pay most of the trial costs.

Eleven-year-old Jakob von Metzler was found dead and Gaefgen was convicted in 2003 of kidnapping the son of a prominent Frankfurt banker in an effort to get a ransom, then murdering the boy. Gaefgen was sentenced to life in prison.

Judge Arne Hasse wrote in his ruling Thursday that the court rejected Gaefgen's demand for at least euro10,000 ($14,225) in damages related to the mental pain resulting from the officer's threat because "the plaintiff could not prove that his alleged trauma stemmed from how he was treated at police headquarters."

"Based on the evidence, it is much more likely that this (trauma) is to be attributed to the experience of killing the victim," Hasse wrote in his ruling.

He said the officer had not respected Gaefgen's rights at the time he made the threat -- which he did before it was known that the plaintiff had killed the boy, whom he had kidnapped on his way home from school. Gaefgen demanded a euro1 million ransom.

The Frankfurt deputy police chief who made the threat of violence was convicted of inducing abuse of authority in 2004 and sentenced to a year's probation.

[Associated Press]

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.