uthanasia process: Salzburg physician before starting court today for murder

uthanasia process: Salzburg physician before starting court today for murder
07th October 2008 09:34


Retired lung doctor should have killed gravely ill friend with syringes - accused pleaded not guilty of murder - to 16 process October postponed
Salzburg - At the Salzburg Regional Court had since today, Tuesday, responsibility, a retired physician assisted suicide into hours. The earlier lung doctor Helmut W. (67) stood on suspicion of murder before the jury. The indictment accuses him of having injected a severely depressed 70-year-old woman from the Flachgau in June 2006, three injections in the feet, which led to death. W. himself dismissed the murder charge and said instead of "euthanasia out of compassion."

The incident has taken place in a house in Obertrum Flachgau. According to the indictment W. has put his longtime good friend of three injections tramadol and methadone in the legs. After a psychiatric report but the doctor would have to be clear that the suffering from depression, hypomania, epilepsy and dementia woman who also fond of the alcoholic and chain smoker, was formed have no free will of killing anymore. The prosecution therefore does not put the facts "killing on demand", which is threatened with a punishment of six months to five years, but "murder" (ten to 20 years or life imprisonment).

"No, I'm not guilty," W. said at the beginning of the process. In the past five years of her life the woman had repeatedly expressed a desire death because he had yet to persuade her, "you are rich, enjoying life." But last year it was with the woman went downhill fast. She had a heart operation, "severe circulatory problems, calcifications and softening in the brain." A suicide attempt by the woman by a drug cocktail around four months before her death on 13 June 2006 had failed.

"In the end she was quite haggard and white in the face, like a ghost you said to me. 'Now you must help me now is the final moment, where I still have all the senses together to decide.' When she. I have not done so sorry if it was not her gone so bad, I would not have helped her, "said the doctor, who had known the woman as 50 years.

Stood third injection

The woman had two injections of morphine injected himself, then he had her put a third injection. "I stand by it, even if you lock me up, it does not matter if I sleep here or there, that great freedom is at home either. You can send me to Siberia," he swore an appraiser and called him a "monkey "as" soulless ". Of tramadol and methadone injections, as stated in the indictment, he knew nothing. Punctures are also not known him in the feet.

The expert testimony substantiated Was not in all respects. Medical examiner was able to find Edith Tutsch-Bauer at the corpse of the woman no puncture marks on his arms, as the doctor had said. And the found of their injection sites on the feet are very unusual for a layman, because it was difficult to meet there the veins above individual exactly as was the case. In addition, the 70-year-old was not terminally ill. The toxicologist repeated his statement that the woman had died from a Poly-drug intoxication from methadone and tramadol, and not to morphine. This one was not found in the body.

Not a mental illness

Since the accused had refused to undergo psychiatric examination in the investigation, today issued the renowned court psychiatrist Reinhard Haller, a result of his observations and video recordings during the trial an opinion. A mental illness, he could exclude with reasonable certainty, Haller, W., however, as a striking personality: "He is emotionally unstable and prone to exaggeration." The personality disorder but was not so heavy that they lift up the sanity.