The Supreme Court rejected the defense attorney's appeal as unfounded and upheld the verdict of the Court of Appeal, which sentenced Christian Gondi to 30 years in prison for the murder of German citizen Klaus Deutschlander.
Gondi was convicted of a felony - aggravated murder.
"Recognizing the request for the reopening of the criminal proceedings of the defense attorney of the convicted Kristian Gondi, the Higher Court in Podgorica, by a decision from 2021, allowed the reopening of the criminal proceedings concluded by the judgment of the Higher Court in Podgorica in 2016, so the judgment became final on 25.04.2017 in relation to the accused Kristian Gondi, who was tried in absentia and the aforementioned decision decided to schedule a new main trial in relation to this accused. The Higher Court in Podgorica, by a judgment issued in May 2023, upheld the judgment from May 2016, by which the accused Kristian Gondi was found guilty of the criminal offense of aggravated murder under Article 144, paragraph 1, item 4, in conjunction with Article 23 of the Criminal Code of Montenegro and sentenced to 30 years in prison," the Supreme Court reminds in a statement.
The Court of Appeals rejected the appeal of Gondi's defense counsel as unfounded and upheld the High Court's verdict in May 2023. "The defense counsel for the defendant Christian Gondi timely filed an appeal against the second-instance verdict due to, as he stated, significant violations of the provisions of criminal procedure, incorrectly and incompletely determined facts, violations of the Criminal Code and the decision on punishment."
For complicity in the same criminal offense, Rade Stošić has already been sentenced to 30 years in prison.
"The reasoning of the Supreme Court's judgment, among other things, states that the lower courts established beyond doubt that the injured party was deprived of his life in the apartment in which he lived with the defendant Rade Stošić, and they based such a determination not only on the statement of the defendant Stošić from the previous proceedings, whose statement was assessed as evidence within the framework of other evidence presented, but also on the results of other evidence presented in the repeated proceedings. Regarding the decision on the sentence, the Supreme Court assessed that the lower courts correctly evaluated the gravity of the committed criminal offense and the personal circumstances on the part of the defendant Kristijan Gondi, which were of importance for determining the sentence, and sentenced the defendant to a prison sentence of 30 years, which, in the opinion of this court, is proportionate to the gravity of the criminal offense in question and the degree of guilt of the defendant and represents an adequate measure for achieving the purpose of punishment under Article 32 of the Criminal Code of Montenegro, within the general purpose of prescribing and imposing criminal sanctions under Article 4 "Article 2 of the Criminal Code of Montenegro," the statement reads.
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