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The Judicial Interpretation of Honour Killings in Germany

Julia Kasselt (Germany)

Ph.D. Project

In recent years, so-called ‘honour killings’ have received increased attention and sparked controversial public debates in Germany and numerous other countries, including Great Britain, Canada, the Netherlands, and Sweden. One of the points at issue concerns how criminal courts should react to the phenomenon of honour killings. Especially in the U.S., Great Britain, Canada and other common law countries, there has been a debate on the use of a ‘cultural defence’ to diminish or exclude criminal liability in cases of honour killings, as well as in other cases which potentially result from the cultural background of the offender (e.g., female genital mutilation). A similar discussion occurred in Germany during the 1980s and has once again been rekindled in recent years.

Despite the rise in public attention, only a few academic publications have thus far focused on the issue of criminal punishment of honour killings in Germany. These studies have approached the topic from a theoretical perspective, mostly including a discussion of the case-law of the Federal Supreme Court of Germany (Bundesgerichtshof or BGH) on honour killings. Pursuant to the current judiciary of the BGH, the cultural setting of the perpetrator can only lead to a more lenient sentence under exceptional circumstances, especially if the perpetrator was unable to disengage from his cultural ties. Generally, the offender is to be convicted of murder for base motives, which implies imprisonment for life. As the judges of the BGH did not however elaborate on the specific premises of the exceptional circumstances, their reasoning leaves a notable margin for interpretation in the German regional courts, which have jurisdiction in the first instance over indictable offences, including murder and manslaughter.

Due to this fact, and because the decisions of the BGH are not binding on lower courts, the question arises as to how the judges of the regional courts should handle these cases, whether they decide to convict the offenders of murder or manslaughter, and whether they consider the cultural background of the offender a mitigating or rather an aggravating circumstance. To date, no empirical research on the rulings of the German regional courts regarding the punishment of honour killings has been done. The PhD project intends to close this research gap and, therefore, aims to determine how the German regional courts deal with the differing moral concepts and values of the offenders and, furthermore, ascertain which factors are relevant for the process of decision-making and sentencing in honour killing cases. To this end, an extensive quantitative and qualitative analysis of the regional courts' judgments on honour-related cases of intentional homicide (including attempts) in the period between 1996 and 2005 has been conducted.

A second research aim of the project is to examine whether the sentencing of German regional courts in honour-related homicides differs from the sentencing in other cases of intentional homicide. A sample of intimate partner killings occurring in the same timeframe is currently being analysed; subsequently, comparisons between both samples will be drawn.

Research Interests and Goals

Lethal violence, sentencing, theories of crime

Publications

(selection)
  • Oberwittler, Dietrich / Kasselt, Julia: Ehrenmorde in Deutschland. Verbrechen gegen das Selbstbestimmungsrecht junger Migrantinnen. In: Unsere Jugend, 2012, Volume 4, p. 166 - 175.
  • Oberwittler, Dietrich / Kasselt, Julia: 'Honor' Killings. In: Gartner, Rosemary / McCarthy, Bill (ed(s).): The Oxford Handbook on Gender, Sex, and Crime. Oxford, Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2012.
  • Oberwittler, Dietrich / Kasselt, Julia: Ehrenmorde in Deutschland. 1996-2005. Eine Untersuchung auf der Basis von Prozessakten. Köln, Wolters Kluwer, Deutschland, 2011.

Lectures

  • 01.02.2012

    The Criminal Punishment of Honour Killings in Germany
    Presentation at the IMPRS REMEP Evaluation

    Location: Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law

  • 15.03.2011

    Ehrenmorde in Deutschland. Eine systematische Untersuchung ehrbezogener Tötungsdelikte in Familien und Partnerschaften zwischen 1996 und 2005
    Brown bag seminar at the Max-Planck-Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law (with PD Dr. Dietrich Oberwittler)

    Location: MPI Freiburg

  • 04.03.2011

    Ehre im Spiegel der Justiz
    Presentation at the doctoral students' seminar of the Berner Graduiertenschule für Strafrechtswissenschaft

    Location: Lenk (Switzerland)

  • 20.02.2011

    ‘Cultural discount’ or ‘zero tolerance’? The judicial response to the phenomenon of ‘honour’ in Germany
    Presentation at the IMPRS REMEP Winter University 2011

    Location: MPI for Social Anthropology, Halle

  • 15.12.2010

    Ehrenmorde: Eine Frage der Ehre (?)
    Presentation at the REMEP lecture series "Gewalt und Ordung - On Violence and Order"

    Location: University of Freiburg

  • 18.11.2010

    Honor Killings: distinct type or just another facet of domestic violence? An empirical analysis based on a nation-wide sample from Germany, 1996-2005
    Presentation at the Annual Conference of the American Society of Criminology (with PD Dr. Dietrich Oberwittler)

    Location: San Francisco

  • 02.06.2010

    "Ehrenmorde" - Auch ein deutsches Problem (?)
    Presentation at a police meeting on profiling

    Location: Police Academy Freiburg

  • 15.02.2010

    The judicial interpretation of ‘honour killings' in Germany
    Presentation at the IMPRS REMEP Winter University 2010

    Location: Husseren-les-Chateaux, Alsace (France)

  • 10.09.2009

    Honour Killings in Germany, 1996-2005:A national study based on prosecution files
    Presentation at the 9th Annual Conference of the European Society of Criminology

    Location: Ljubljana, Slovenia

  • 09.12.2008

    Ehrenmorde in Deutschland. Theoretische Grundlagen und empirische Einblicke
    Brown bag seminar at the Max-Planck-Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law

    Location: MPI Freiburg

Curriculum vitae

Since May 2009 PhD Candidate of the International Max Planck Research School on Retaliation, Mediation and Punishment (IMPRS REMEP) at the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law in Freiburg i.Br., Germany
May 2008 - January 2011 Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law in Freiburg i.Br., Germany, Department of Criminology, Research Project: Honour Killings in Germany, 1996-2005
October 2006 - September 2008 Master's Degree Programme in International Criminology (M.A.), University of Hamburg, Germany
Thesis: Honour Killings in Germany. Theoretical Foundations and Empirical Insights.
June 2006 - September 2006 Internship at the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law in Freiburg i.Br., Germany, Department of Criminology, Research Project: The European Homicide-Suicide Study
October 2000 - March 2006 Law Studies, Humboldt-University, Berlin, Germany
First State Examination (1. jur. Staatsexamen)