A man had to find this out the hard way at the Court of Appeal in Luxembourg City on Monday. He had been sentenced to ten years in prison in January 2019, and is now facing fifteen years.
The case in question concerned the violent assault of an elderly couple in their flat in Bereldange in December 2008. At first instance, five individuals were prosecuted for beating the victims, who were aged 73 and 83 at the time of the events, for threatening them with a revolver and a knife as well as for stealing money and jewellery, among other things.
The defendant, who appeared in court on Monday, said he appealed because his sentence was too severe. He had not played a big role and had not hit the victims. This is a slightly different reading from that of the trial judges, noted the president of the court. The accused explained that he had just come out of a psychiatric hospital and that he had grown and was a different man today. One individual, who was cleared of all charges during the first trial, had organised everything, he claimed. He had only been an executioner and had the impression that his case had not been considered seriously enough. He regretted the incident every day but could not change the fact that it happened. The judge pointed out that the victims reported that the man had been wielding a knife and had made threats against them. The defendant replied that if he had not been there, his accomplices would have "done much more". But nobody was willing to believe him, the defendant lamented.
According to the defendant's lawyer, his client did have partial responsibility, but he had not been the main actor, who would have been the man acquitted at first instance. At the time, his client had just been discharged from a psychiatric hospital and met the acquitted individual. The assault was allegedly the latter's plan. That is why, the lawyer argued, his client's sentence should be reduced.
The representative of the public prosecutor's office argued that the defendant's lawyer made it seem as if his client had nothing to do with the incident, which was however not the case. The accused was "the brute with the knife in his hand". The man, with his 15-page criminal record, had indeed played a key role and the substitute prosecutor found few mitigating circumstances for him.
And as she considered, unlike the judges of first instance, that the reasonable time limit had not been exceeded, she requested not ten, but fifteen years of imprisonment for the defendant.
The Court of Appeal will deliver its verdict on 25 November.
