I have access to the full article, though I don’t think it’s legal to paste the entire thing here. There is not a lot of information in it anyways:
The material in question consists of 541 pictures of graphic comics featuring incest and sex between children and adults. The images are supposedly “very real”, though they are also consistently referred to as “comics” which seems to be contradictory.
The defendant is a 68-year-old man who claims to have downloaded the images in order to find a way to deal with his own trauma which was caused by experiences of child abuse. He never got therapy for this.
He claims that he downloaded these kind of comics only once. When he downloaded those images, he did not even realize that they were illegal.
He also stated that he did not use the images for sexual arousal, nor did he download any pictures showing real children. In fact, he stated that he was disgusted by the very idea.
He admitted to everything and voiced deep regrets and shame. It’s unlikely that he will do anything against the court’s decision.
In the end he was given a fine of €2400.
That is about all the information there is in the article.
I think that is to be understood as “a likely scenario of abuse”. Many lawyers still think this way and I can absolutely believe a misunderstanding like this. We had sth. similiar already posted on here, also from Germany, but the police crime prevention “force” stating that possession of Manga is illegal on their website.
It sounds to me like the guy felt so guilty about the posession of those “comics” that he pled guilty and intends to not appeal the verdict, even though its clear that under the current interpretation of German law this conviction is clearly a miscarriage of justice.
If this was in the United States I would feel comftrable saying that one case in a local court does not change the controlling interpretation of the law set by a higher court. But Germany is a civil law country not a common law country so I am not sure if it’s different there.
Impossible for legally binding precedences to exist in Germany, so this ruling has no effect since judges are only loyal to the law. Here is a google translated explanation from a law site, because I’m lazy
The German legal system provides that the courts are not bound by judgments that have not been made in the same legal dispute. As a result, the German courts themselves are allowed to deviate from judgments of the highest federal courts, i.e. the Federal Court of Justice, the Federal Labor Court, the Federal Administrative Court, the Federal Finance Court and the Federal Social Court. According to Art. 97 Paragraph 1 of the Basic Law (GG), the judges are only subject to the law.
There can be some binding through the concept of legal peace, but a small court in the middle of a desert like the one in the article is on the lowest tier of the food chain, so nobody cares and the mentioned higher court rulings have more weight
Although binding to precedents is alien to German law, the decisions of the appellate courts, especially the highest federal courts, actually have a significant binding effect. The orientation of the lower courts towards the decisions of the higher courts serves above all to ensure legal certainty and legal peace.