Somewhere over the evening of 1 February 2016....in Berlin....in the Kurfurstendamm area of town, a major four-lane street on the west part of Berlin....two guys met up. Both in their mid-20s....they decided to have a race on the streets of Berlin. You can sense....they really didn't anticipate anything bad happening.
Top speed? Cops say they got up to 170 kph on the Kurfurstendamm. Eleven intersections....they blasted through.....red lights and all.
Then somewhere around Nurnberger Strasse, they came upon an SUV driven by a 69-year old German guy. Cops say his vehicle was tossed to the side by a minimum of 200 feet. The old guy didn't stand a chance in this accident. He died there on the street.
A lot of anger got dumped by the general public. The public prosecutor went to the maximum threat possible....life in prison. Court agreed. Both guys were set to spend the rest of their lives in prison.
Well...until yesterday.
This case came to the national court system, and they looked over the requirement for life in prison. In German law, you have to have 'intent'. Nothing shown in court ever demonstrated intent by the two guys.
So the national court says the sentence is terminated and the judge has to review the case and hand down a proper sentence....for 'careless driving'. Max you can get? Five years in prison.
The cops? I sat last night and watched two interviews done....each had a cop as part of the story told, and each livid over the reduced sentence. As both point out, over the past decade....racing through city streets is getting to be noted more often, and cops are fed up with the behavior. In this case, both guys interviewed felt the life sentence was appropriate.
If I were the judge involved, now forced to hand out a different judgement.....fine, five years it'll be, and then I'd probably make a note that neither can ever have a license ever again. I'm not sure if German judges can make some assessment like that but it would like the logical thing.
As for this making the Bundestag invent a new law to cover racing? It's sad that they have to sit and waste time like this on debates but they probably need something to protect the general public.
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