Dresden. The man from Pulsnitz has a strange way of negotiating an investigation. For the first time, he came into conflict with the law in 2016 – because he had accepted a letter but not opened it. The story ended for him with a sentence. He had to pay a fine of 400 euros because of false affirmation on oath.
Now the trained electrician was standing before the judge again. At the end of 2019, he had received another penalty order, now for violating the confidentiality of the word. But this time he didn’t accept the fine of 450 euros. He appealed against this decision and came to his trial with defense attorney.
According to the indictment, the man had recorded his half-hour conversation with a registrar as a sound file during a visit to the Dresden city archive. He had neither announced this recording, nor did the injured party give her consent.
The defense attorney took the floor immediately and denied the facts in principle. In addition, her client’s health is severely restricted and is in psychotherapeutic treatment. He couldn’t remember anything, which is why he was always on the move with the camera running. Using the notes, he recapitulates his day.
Defense attorney demands acquittal
On the day of the crime, the 35-year-old visited the archive because he had created a family tree and had questions about his pedigree. When he left, he lost his camera. It fell out of his backpack in the waiting area. The lawyer claimed that it was a public building, and you could record there.
The man may not have known that the recording was going on, she said and demanded an acquittal or at least a suspension of the proceedings. The police had no right to examine the camera without a reason, but should have handed the technology over to their client immediately. “I have to complain that the police turned on the camera at all,” said the defense attorney.
But judge Roland Wirlitsch did not accept the last criticism. “If there is a suspicion that something has been recorded, the police can do it,” he said. A police officer reported that the injured party and her department head had delivered the camera. An official found that the device had made sound recordings. The data were not evaluated. The amount of data was far too large, said the officer. The injured party filed a criminal complaint.
Judge Wirlitsch sentenced the defendant to a fine of 150 euros and confiscated the camera as the instrument of crime. It remained well below the public prosecutor’s request of 450 euros. The fault of the accused is very low. But he must understand that the injured party does not want to be secretly recorded. “You wouldn’t want that either,” Wirlitsch said to the defendant.
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