Dieter Degowski spent almost thirty years in prison for his part in a hostage-taking that began in Gladbeck, in North Rhine-Westphalia, on August 16, 1988, and ended two days later near Bad Honnef. For about 54 hours he and Hans-Jürgen Rösner held hostages. Three people died before it was over: a teenage boy among the hostages, a young woman who was still being held at the end, and a police officer killed in a traffic accident during the police operation.
On March 22, 1991, after 109 days of hearings, the Essen Regional Court convicted Degowski of murder and of hostage-taking resulting in death, and sentenced him to life imprisonment. Rösner also received life, with preventive detention ordered to follow his sentence. A woman tried with them, Marion L., was sentenced to nine years for her part. Degowski's road out of prison ran through the German law on release from life sentences, a long series of hearings before a sentence-enforcement chamber in Arnsberg, and years of supervised leave. In October 2017 the court announced that he would be paroled and given a new name. By early 2018 he was free.
Degowski was in his early thirties in the summer of 1988. He was born around 1956. He and Rösner were men of about the same age who had both attended special schools, and in 1991 they stood trial side by side. The trial in Essen dealt mainly with the three days in August and with the question of who was responsible for each death.
The events began in Gladbeck on Tuesday, August 16, 1988, with a failed robbery that turned at once into a hostage-taking. What followed lasted until Thursday, August 18. Police ended it near Bad Honnef. Marion L., who had joined the two men, was arrested in Bremen during the events.
The first death came in Bremen. A teenage boy, one of the hostages, died there, and prosecutors and the court held Degowski responsible. In February 1991 the prosecution told the court that Degowski had killed the boy intentionally. That death is the one for which he was convicted of murder.
The second death came at the very end. On the third day, as the hostage-taking ended, a young woman held hostage died. Her death was traced to Rösner, not to Degowski. Prosecutors told the court in 1991 that the evidence did not clearly prove Rösner had acted with intent; they argued that he was still answerable for her death under the law on hostage-taking resulting in death. Police took both men into custody near Bad Honnef that day.
The third death was a police officer who died in a traffic accident involving the pursuing police vehicles. No one was tried for causing it, and it formed no part of the charges against Degowski.
The conduct of journalists during those days, who spoke to the hostage-takers and hostages while the crime was in progress, led the German Press Council to add a rule to its press code that there may be no interviews with perpetrators while a crime is under way.
The three defendants were tried together before the Essen Regional Court, in a trial that ran for about a year and a half. The presiding judge led a chamber that heard testimony on every stage of the three days, on the police operation, and on the mental state of the two men.
Psychiatric experts examined the question of criminal responsibility. They could not rule out that the defendants' capacity had been reduced by intoxication at the time. The prosecution answered that this made no difference to the assessment, because the defendants had been fully responsible when they planned the crime and when they began it, and that all three were fully culpable.
On the 103rd day of the hearing, in early February 1991, the two prosecutors gave their closing statement. They asked for life imprisonment for Rösner, together with preventive detention, and for life imprisonment for Degowski. For Marion L. they asked for fourteen years. They told the court that the trial had produced no evidence of unlawful conduct by the police.
The defense took a very different line. From the opening of the trial, Degowski's lead counsel had tried to put the political and police handling of the events before the court. In the closing statements of early March 1991, he argued that Degowski had been a follower, that the crime bore Rösner's mark rather than his, and that Degowski had not intended the boy's death and had acted with diminished responsibility. Degowski's lawyers asked for a fixed prison term of no more than fifteen years; Rösner's lawyers had already asked for a fixed term of eight to fifteen years. The defense attacked the decision of the interior minister of North Rhine-Westphalia to refuse free passage in exchange for the hostages, and described the final police intervention in the harshest terms. When a co-counsel called that intervention murderous, the presiding judge rebuked him. Both defense teams announced complaints to the Federal Constitutional Court over the conduct of the trial.
The verdict came on Friday, March 22, 1991, before a full courtroom, after 109 days of hearings. The court largely followed the prosecution. Degowski was convicted of murder and of hostage-taking resulting in death, among other offenses, and sentenced to life imprisonment. Rösner was also sentenced to life, with the conviction including attempted murder, and the court ordered preventive detention to follow his sentence. Marion L. was sentenced to nine years for complicity.
The police failures that had been argued for months played no part in the reasons. In a subordinate clause, the court described the final police intervention near Bad Honnef as lawful emergency aid to the hostages ("rechtmäßige Nothilfe"). Its criticism of the police was mild and confined to the arrest of Marion L. in Bremen, where it found that officers had acted without a coherent plan. All defense counsel announced that they would seek review of the judgment on points of law.
Both men went on to serve their life sentences in North Rhine-Westphalia.
Degowski spent more than twenty of his years in custody in the same prison in North Rhine-Westphalia. There he completed an apprenticeship as a cook and worked as a yard cleaner. Prison staff described him as inconspicuous, and he appeared willing to undergo therapy, while Rösner refused all therapy. By August 2016 the head of the prison said that he was coping well with the long years and had to learn patience.
Under German law a life sentence can be suspended on parole after fifteen years, unless the particular gravity of the offender's guilt requires further enforcement. Degowski's minimum term ran longer than that. It expired in 2013, about twenty-five years after his arrest, and only then could the question of his release be put to a court.
In August 2013 the sentence-enforcement chamber of the Arnsberg Regional Court, which had jurisdiction over his prison, held a 45-minute hearing on whether the rest of Degowski's sentence could be suspended on parole. A psychiatric expert examined him. The expert found that he was no longer dangerous to life, although the report also recorded that he showed little capacity for self-reflection and a low level of empathy. Degowski was 57.
On August 14, 2013, the court ruled that he would stay in prison. There would be no release in the short term. But the chamber also ordered that preparations for his release begin, so that he could be readied for life outside through a gradual relaxation of his conditions of custody. The court regarded it as a problem that in twenty-five years he had been granted very few such relaxations. His lawyer said the court had made clear that the preparation now had to begin in earnest, that it usually took two to three years, and that her client was glad to have a chance at freedom.
The prison began the process the court had ordered. Degowski was first allowed out on escorted leave, from about 2014, and later on unescorted leave. He completed several periods of leave without any incident. In August 2016 the prison said that preparation for his release on parole was going well, though it gave no details of the relaxations, and a further expert report was being prepared; the expert had already visited him once. His lawyer described him that summer as a friendly and peaceable man who deeply regretted his crime, and said she could file a new application for release at any time, probably in agreement with the prison.
In February 2017 a spokesman for the North Rhine-Westphalia justice ministry said that the chances were good that Degowski would be free by the end of the year, and that the final decision lay with the sentence-enforcement chamber in Arnsberg.
On Tuesday, October 10, 2017, a spokesman for the Arnsberg Regional Court announced that Degowski would be released on parole in the coming months. The court had examined the question thoroughly, obtained expert opinions and statements, and agreed with the favorable prognoses. The decision was not yet final. Degowski, then 61, had served nearly thirty years. He would receive a new name to make his return to society easier.
By early March 2018 he had been free for a few weeks, after thirty years in custody. His present name and place of residence have not been made public.
Rösner's sentence took a different course. He applied for early release in 2004, and the application was refused, as was his request to shorten the sentence. In 2016, when he applied again for relaxations of custody and for early release, a new psychiatric report found a very high risk of further offending; his lawyer rejected the report and asked for another. Rösner had refused therapy for years. In 2009 he received a further six months for a drug offense committed in prison. Because preventive detention was ordered in the 1991 judgment, he faces that detention once his sentence is served. In October 2017 he was still in prison in North Rhine-Westphalia.
Marion L. was convicted in 1991 of complicity and sentenced to nine years.
Section 211 of the German Criminal Code provides that a murderer is punished with life imprisonment ("Der Mörder wird mit lebenslanger Freiheitsstrafe bestraft"). The hostage-taking offense in section 239b applies to anyone who seizes a person in order to coerce others by threatening death, serious injury or prolonged deprivation of liberty, with a minimum of five years. Through its reference to section 239a, a hostage-taking in which the offender causes the victim's death at least through gross recklessness carries "lebenslange Freiheitsstrafe oder Freiheitsstrafe nicht unter zehn Jahren," life imprisonment or no less than ten years. That was the provision under which Rösner was held answerable for the young woman's death, and it formed part of Degowski's conviction as well.
Release from a life sentence is governed by section 57a. A court suspends the remainder of a life sentence on parole once fifteen years have been served, provided that the particular gravity of the offender's guilt ("die besondere Schwere der Schuld") does not require further enforcement and that the other statutory conditions for parole are met. In 1977 the Federal Constitutional Court held that every person sentenced to life must keep at least a theoretical chance of regaining freedom. The decision is made not by the trial court but by a sentence-enforcement chamber at the regional court responsible for the prison, which is why Degowski's case was decided in Arnsberg rather than Essen. Preventive detention, the measure ordered for Rösner, is not a punishment; it is indefinite and must be reviewed every year.
At trial Degowski's defense contested murder. It argued that he had not intended the boy's death, that his responsibility was diminished, and that he had been a follower of Rösner. The court rejected that case and convicted him of murder, as the prosecution had urged.
Responsibility for the young woman's death was argued between the two sides as well. Her death was traced to Rösner, and the prosecution itself accepted that intent had not been proved against him for that death; it was charged as hostage-taking resulting in death. Degowski's defense argued that he had been incapable of acting at that moment and bore no criminal responsibility for it.
The conduct of the police was argued throughout the trial. The defense described the final intervention as reckless and the refusal of free passage as a breach of duty. The prosecution found no unlawful police conduct, and the court described the intervention as lawful emergency aid.
About 1956: Dieter Degowski is born.
August 16, 1988: The hostage-taking begins in Gladbeck.
August 1988: A teenage boy among the hostages dies in Bremen; Marion L. is arrested in Bremen.
August 18, 1988: Police end the hostage-taking near Bad Honnef; a young woman held hostage dies; Degowski and Rösner are taken into custody. A police officer dies in a traffic accident during the operation.
February 1991: On the 103rd hearing day, prosecutors ask for life for both men, preventive detention for Rösner and fourteen years for Marion L.
Early March 1991: Defense closing statements; Degowski's counsel asks for no more than fifteen years.
March 22, 1991: The Essen Regional Court sentences Degowski and Rösner to life and Marion L. to nine years; defense counsel announce appeals on points of law.
2004: Rösner's application for early release is refused.
2013: Degowski's minimum term expires.
August 14, 2013: The Arnsberg Regional Court keeps Degowski in custody and orders preparation for his release.
About 2014: Degowski begins escorted leave, later unescorted leave.
August 2016: The prison reports that release preparations are going well.
February 2017: The state justice ministry says release by the end of the year is likely.
October 10, 2017: The Arnsberg Regional Court announces that Degowski will be paroled within months and given a new name.
Early 2018: Degowski is released after nearly thirty years in custody.