Judge Anna K. was Sentenced for Permitting Last Rites during the 2020 Lockdown (Part 1)

In the best Germany of all time, a judge was just sentenced to a year in prison because in April 2020, she ruled that a priest might visit a terminally ill care home resident

It would seem that the pace of the West’s demise is quickening.

Last week, I brought you some ‘news™’ that a Branch Covidian judge in Austria actually sentenced a woman for negligent manslaughter, alleging that she had ‘infected’ one of her neighbours with Covid. Said neighbour, a cancer patient who eventually died of pneumonia—it’s unclear if that cause of death was bacterial or viral in nature, but since it wasn’t mentioned that is was a viral pneumonia, I’m inferring bacterial origins.

In case you’d require evidence beyond reasonable doubt, well, there was none. The judge based her verdict on one (!) microbiological expertise, which she deemed ‘good enough’. You may read up on this farce here:

Case of Woman Convicted for 'Infecting' a Neighbour 'Likely to be Headed for the Appeals Court'

While there is reason to expect the verdict to be reversed during appeals proceedings, today I have a different, if connected, case. It’s about a court case (sic) in Germany, which took place four years after its putative ‘cause’: back in spring 2020, during the first ‘lockdown’, a judge had permitted a priest to deliver the last rites and sacrament to a dying elderly care-home inpatient. Now, four and a half years later, that judge was sentenced because she had ‘perverted the course of justice’ (orig. Rechtsbeugung).

Let that sink in for a moment.

For permitting (sic) a priest to be compassionate in the literally time-honoured Christian way, a judge was sentenced for ‘perverting the course of justice’.

For the long-form treatment of this abomination, we now turn to the Association of Critical Judges and Prosecutors (orig. Netzwerk kritischer Richter und Staatsanwälte e.V., or KRISTA). This is a long piece, dear readers, so grab a cup of coffee and keep your pitchforks ready.

As always, translation and emphases [as well as snarky commentary] mine; note that for readability, I’ve omitted the references and footnotes, which can be found in the linked original.

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When Doubts Are Not Permitted: The Gera Regional Court Ruled vs. Anna K. for Perversion of Justice

By Matthias Guericke, Netzwerk KRISTA, 3 Oct. 2024 [source]

The principle of in dubio pro reo—(when) in doubt, rule for the accused—is one of the central trial maxims of criminal proceedings under the rule of law. Under the rule of law, it is not the defendant who must prove his innocence, but the state must prove the guilt of the defendant. If this is not possible because doubts remain at the end of the trial, the defendant must be acquitted. The validity of this principle requires no further justification under the rule of law—it goes without saying.

But what happens when judges no longer give room for doubt, when they wipe doubt off the table, or do not allow it to arise in the first place? When judges persuade themselves that this or that, which is important for the conviction, cannot be seriously doubted, even though, on critical reflection, it very well could and therefore should be? Then the principle of in dubio pro reo might still exist on paper, but it no longer applies [this is in the passive voice in the original, but I think we should render it into its active form: ‘then it (the principle) is no longer applied’ and add ‘by judges who consider themselves above the law, thereby rendering the trial a sham and their own position, if not the judiciary’s as a whole, illegitimate]. Then the innocent defendant will also be convicted [this is called ‘dead letter’, or totes Recht].

The Incident

Anna K. was a trial judge at Altenburg District Court in Thuringia. A seasoned trial judge with almost 5 years experience, she should have been appointed for life long ago. Since the beginning of 2020, in addition to her usual departmental work, she had been working in the special judicial on-call service, which is responsible for urgent cases (arrest warrants, urgent interventions, temporary injunctions, etc.) for the entire court district outside normal working hours and on weekends. On 14 April 2020, the time of the first coronavirus lockdown, she received an application from a pastor living 70 km away from Altenburg. The priest applied for a temporary injunction against a nursing home that refused to allow the pastor to visit a terminally ill 89-year-old nursing home resident. The resident had been a member of the pastor’s congregation for 35 years and had received pastoral care from him. She was now only receiving palliative care, but was of sound mind. The nursing home invoked the current Thuringian Corona Ordinance2 against the pastor, which stipulated a general ban on visits to inpatient care facilities. Although the facility management could allow exceptions in particularly justified exceptional cases, the pastor had fallen on deaf ears with the care home management.

Section 30(4) of the Infection Protection Act stipulates that the pastor must be allowed access to the people concerned even in the event of an officially ordered isolation, i.e., the isolation of sick people or the quarantine of suspected cases of infection. Anna K. concluded from this that this had to apply all the more in the case of the nursing home resident, against whom no isolation order had been issued at all, but who was ‘only’ subject to the Corona Ordinance. The court issued the requested temporary injunction and the priest was able to visit the nursing home resident. She died five weeks later [I hope she died in peace and may rest so, too]. This decision caused an uproar. The pastor’s actions were honoured in the Thuringian press and it was recalled that he had already stood up courageously in the GDR ‘when others ducked away’ [here would be endnote 3; I’ve included the link to the original reporting, but this case was also discussed in the trade Ärztezeitung, the Medical Association’s journal]. The responsible [Thuringian] ministry requested the decision and corrected the Corona Ordinance accordingly [and, as the footnote reads, ‘acceded to the plaintiff’s arguments’, i.e., incorporated the pastor’s argument and correspondingly amended the Covid ordinance]. The decision had a positive effect beyond the specific case.

The problem was that the pastor was Anna K.’s father and therefore should not have been allowed to rule on the matter [I do suppose that, if push came to shove, and since the language of the Covid ordinance was quite clear on the rights of the pastor to visit terminally ill nursing home residents despite the Covid ordinance, no other judge—but a Branch Covidian psychopathic misanthrope—would have ruled differently, right?].

Disciplinary and Investigative Proceedings

When the director of the Altenburg district court learnt that the pastor was Anna K.’s father—she had done nothing to conceal this—disciplinary proceedings were initiated against her [there you go: I stand by what I wrote in the preceding comment]. In a decision dated 23 March 2021, Anna K. was dismissed from her position as a temporarily-employed judge and immediate enforcement was ordered. The ensuing legal dispute over the dismissal, or more precisely over the restoration of the suspensive effect of the objection, ended a year later at the Federal Constitutional Court, which went to some lengths to justify the non-acceptance of Anna K.’s constitutional complaint for judgement [if you read German and have the stomach, here is the ruling 2 BvR 92/22, dated 9 March 2022; I do think that, in light of the recent decision by the Osnabrück Administrative Court, that this case, too, will be re-litigated before too long].

But that was not enough. The investigator in the disciplinary proceedings, then Vice President, now President [oh, someone received a promotion in part of these shenanigans: who would’ve thought…(I’m off to puke now)] of Gera Regional Court, filed a criminal complaint alleging the perversion of justice. As Anna K. had worked for the public prosecutor’s office in Gera for some time during her time as a trial judge, the latter was of the opinion that she could not handle the proceedings due to ‘bias’ [orig. ‘Befangenheit’, which Mr. Guericke placed in scare quotes as there is nothing in the law or rules of court that makes ‘bias’, or ‘Befangenheit’, of public prosecutors a criminal deed: it’s a fake charge, or lawfare, plain and simple, which should lead to the dismissal of the Vice President, now President of the Gera Regional Court for, well, ‘the perversion of justice’]. The case came to Erfurt and the Erfurt public prosecutor’s office filed charges of obstruction of justice at the Gera Regional Court in 2021 [the same applies]. However, as Anna K. had also worked at Gera Regional Court and knew many of her colleagues there personally, a number of judges recused themselves [those ‘many of her (former) colleagues’ had a better sense and should be considered replacement material for the lawbreakers who incited this witchhunt], i.e., they filed a self-report pursuant to Section 30 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. It therefore took 19 months before a decision was made on the admission of the indictment to the main trial. Over the course of this time, the defence received 21 [!] different [!!] notices of appointment from the competent [!!!] criminal division. The self-indictment of the presiding judge of the competent criminal chamber was declared well-founded [i.e., the prosecution struggled heavily to find a judge—really anyone—who would preside]. As a result, a young judge whose own probationary period had ended than two years earlier had to preside over the trial.

The Trial

The shenanigans continued in the main trial, which took place from 18 April to 21 June 2024 on a total of seven trial days and in which not only the defendant’s father, his wife, and the manager of the care home were heard as witnesses, but also the director of Altenburg Local Court, the former president of Gera Regional Court, a number of other court employees and police officers [a footnote further explains that Anna K.’s residence was searched by police, apparently because, unlike, you know, knive-wielding illegals, she’s a Very Bad Person™ and a Dangerous Individual™].

The current President of Gera Regional Court, who had been the investigator in the disciplinary proceedings [against Anna K.], was also heard as a witness [if you can believe it…]. He arrived 15 minutes late for his hearing, which did not earn him any criticism [this is called ‘Präpotenz’ where I come from: knowing engaging in objectionable and/or illegal conduct because you know you’re not going to be held responsible; it’s a hallmark of entitled, pampered, and, ultimately, sociopathic individuals who should be disqualified from positions of authority based on these considerations alone]; on the contrary, the chairwoman of the chamber met him in the corridor outside the courtroom and greeted him with a handshake [I’m off puking once more]. To the astonishment of those present, the President of the Regional Court explained in his questioning that he had deliberately involved the (experienced) presiding judge of the competent criminal chamber in the disciplinary proceedings in order to bias her and keep her out of the criminal proceedings. He then said of the defendant’s father, whom he had heard as a witness in the disciplinary proceedings, that he had ‘seemed to him like a typical fraudster’, a statement that he retracted after protests from the audience [go ahead, feel free to puke once more]. In response to the defence’s objection that the defendant should no longer have been on standby duty at the time of her decision under the Maternity Protection Act because she was four months pregnant, he stated on the record that he had only learned of the pregnancy on 15 April 2020, one day after the defendant had issued the decision, and expressed the suspicion that the defendant had deliberately announced her pregnancy later in order to be able to take over the on-call duty [so much hearsay—from a President of the Regional Court; note, moreover, that the idea of solidarity and duty, which may have inspired Anna K. to continue serving, has apparently never entered the mind of the President of the Regional Court]. However, the personnel file requested by the defence revealed that he had personally signed off on an email from the defendant dated 30 March 2020, in which she informed him of her pregnancy and which had been submitted to him, on 9 April 2020 [so, the President of the Regional Court lied under oath, yet he still seems working in that capacity; in said email, a footnote adds that Anna K. informed her superiors of her pregnancy as early as February 2020]. And without being interrupted by the presiding judge, he explained in detail why he, as the investigator, had seen a strong suspicion of a violation of the law [let’s remind everyone reading this that a witness is supposed to relate facts and leave the judgement about legal consequences of such facts to—the judge and the jury].

The fact that the three professional judges, who are evaluated by the president as their superior—these evaluations are decisive for their further career path—were not impressed by this can be believed or not. In any case, after the defence counsel had pointed out the oddities in the president’s testimony in his closing statement, the presiding judge went on the attack against the defence during the oral statement of reasons—an extremely unusual occurrence—and accused them of having ‘made “unfounded insinuations” against the court and witnesses, used narratives to discredit other participants and thus accepted the risk of a loss of trust in the judiciary’ [this paragraph alone should send chills down anyone’s spine: it’s projection, pure and simple, and it’s wrong, as well as illegal, on so many counts; for the quote, see the Legal Tribune Online’s reporting from the hearing]. The presiding judge apparently saw it as her task to defend her president and as the task of the defence to refrain from criticism so as not to cast doubt on the judiciary—a very questionable understanding of the role of the defence in criminal proceedings [I’m adding Mr. Guericke’s footnote here for context: ‘This attack on the defence seems downright disturbing if you know the defence lawyer, Jörg Geibert. As a CDU politician in Thuringia, he was State Secretary in the Ministry of the Interior, later Minister of the Interior in a CDU-led state government, and is currently a member of the Thuringian Constitutional Court. In Thuringia, he is held in high esteem across party lines as a person of integrity and in his demeanour—and this was also the case in the main hearing—he is a prudent and polite person’].

On 21 June 2024, the defendant was sentenced to one year’s imprisonment for perversion of justice, the execution of which was suspended on probation. Two months of jail time have been deemed time served due to the excessive length of the proceedings. The verdict (case number: 11 KLs 542 Js 23378/20) is not final, the defence has lodged an appeal. The written judgement, which has not been published, comprises no less than 98 pages—a criminal division apparently wanted to be very precise here [nothing says, ‘we’ve got nothing to hide here and everything went according to the books’ than an unpublished (!) written ruling that is very dubious, if that’s the right word].

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Bottom Lines

First up, housekeeping: due to its length, I’ve decided to split this piece in two; I’ll bring part two tomorrow.

A few notes—if you doubt the absurd, if not Kafkaesque, nature of ‘the judiciary’ and its implications in the past almost five years of Covid mindfuckery, I suppose the above account puts these doubts to rest.

The case is virtually exclusively based on projection, derives its impetus from less-than-honourable members of the bench, and contains so many non sequiturs that Mr. Guericke is to be commended for his restraint covering this shit-show.

Now, I’m not a legal expert, and I’m by far not unbiased in my statements here, but I do note a few things that characterise the Covid response in our countries, add a personal remark, and point to its implications.

Common features include a blatant disrespect for the law, tradition, and restraint. It would seem that once the Covid Op commenced, many people—especially among the ‘well-educated™’, middle-class professionals have lost their marbles. They seem to have replaced markers of adulthood and professionalism with emotions (fear, anger) and projection.

If Mr. Guericke’s account is to be belived, virtually all the things Anna K. stood accused of was done by her (former) colleagues in the judiciary. From obstruction to the perversion of justice, from name-calling and problematic (sic) witness statements. On top of it, the presiding judge failed to call out these shenanigans, most likely because she hoped to ingratiate herself with the President of the Regional Court for future career advances.

By contrast, Anna K., even though she could have gone on maternity leave, continued to serve her fellow citizens by remaining on call.

When, as it was revealed, her father appealed to her professional conduct—as well as her conscience, let’s not forget that—to attend to a terminally ill nursing home resident who was also a member of his congregation, Anna K. did what any professional and good Christian should do.

It is hard to not consider what has transpired both an insult to professionalism, decency, and, yes, the Christian faith.

I find it very hard to believe that these contrived allegations against Anna K. would have been brought to bear if her father wasn’t a priest.

I mean, look around—from the rubble of Gaza to the closing of places of worship during Covid (but the possibility to chant stupid slogans in favour of Georg Floyd while anti-mandate protesters were prohibited from assembling)—there is one quite red thread uniting all of these absurdities and perversions, it is that they are following the Gramscian maxim:

Socialism is precisely the religion that must overwhelm Christianity…In the new order, Socialism will triumph by first capturing the culture via infiltration of schools, universities, churches, and the media by transforming the consciousness of society.

(The quote is from his prison notebooks, and you may find this piece on his ‘Long March through History’ quite interesting, too.)

One of the core features of the postmodern condition in ‘the West™’ is that religion is still useful to the powers-that-be, mostly Islam, and mostly to destabilise what remains of European civilisation.

One of the flanking actions in this collectivist-globalist endeavour appears to be the subversion of the rule of law, which is now almost complete. Of this, the above-related circumstances provide compelling evidence.

I’ll conclude this by adding a personal note: I grew up in a Catholic household, although my parents were (are) extremely superficial when it came to their faith (sic). I grew up in a firmly middle-class area of Vienna, Austria, and we did attend church every Sunday. In my later teens, I became so disgusted with the people who also did so—my neighbours and former classmates—which is encapsulated in one anecdote:

One year in the late 1990s, on 1 Dec.—World Aids Day—, a ecumenical (i.e., joint Lutheran-Catholic) service was dedicated to those who suffer from Aids. It was done by one of the visiting chaplains who also held the monthly ‘youth-themed services’ and who was spending his spare time in Vienna’s first charity/shelter/nursing home for those suffering from HIV/Aids, the Aids Hilfe Haus. Of course, these poor souls were shunned as ‘carriers of disease’ by the left-of-centre state government and ‘faggots’ by the official Church.

That chaplain, though, saw it as his calling to attend to those people. Often, we young people would sit down with him after mass and listen to how he related their struggles.

And one 1 Dec. in the late 1990s, that priest had the idea to ask some of the Aids Hilfe Haus’ residents if they would like to attend church. Some came, with others claiming, in the priest’s words (and my recollection), that they’re not believers; the priest’s answer was that it wouldn’t matter.

That night, I overheard the middle-class people I went to church with for years, complaining during service: how dare ‘these people’ show up in what they thought was a ‘nice’ and, seemingly above all, ‘their church’ (they meant the building, which, despite its aesthetic beauty, is but a building).

I was so disgusted. Heck, I remain disgusted to this day. Yet, with the passing of time, I’m also becoming ever more ashamed of going away and not protesting against the phoney ‘faith’ (sic) of my former neighbours.

It’s also why I relate this seemingly unconnected anecdote, because it helps, I’d argue, to understand the trial and tribulations of Anna K.

She, too, grew up in a Christian household, and I don’t doubt for a moment that her intent—which is the topic of the rest of the piece, which I’ll share tomorrow—was just like this: compassion, grounded in the Christian tradition.

Before there can be a reckoning, there needs to be the recognition that we, as a society as well as individuals, have erred. Of course, to err is human, but to recognise out mistakes, ask for forgiveness, and, ultimately, seek to atone for our sins, is also human.

I’ll conclude by adding that, when I read about Anna K.’s case (the first third of the above-linked piece), it moved me to tears. Her father’s compassion and convictions, his seeming disregard for his own safety—remember: this all happened in April 2020—to administer the last rites to a dying woman, and his faith stand as a testament more enduring than anything man has, is doing, or could make.

I’m still trembling and shaking as write these lines.

I’m also still ashamed about the things I didn’t say or do.

We should all strive to do better.

Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets. [Matthew 7:12 (KJV)]