Magnus Gäfgen was a 27-year-old law student in Frankfurt am Main when, on September 27, 2002, he took the life of Jakob von Metzler, a boy from the city. Police arrested him three days later. On July 28, 2003, the Frankfurt am Main Regional Court convicted him of murder, together with a further offense under section 239a of the German Criminal Code that carried a death as its result, and a separate offense. It sentenced him to life imprisonment and found that his guilt was of particular gravity. The Federal Court of Justice dismissed his appeal on points of law in May 2004, and the Federal Constitutional Court refused his complaint that December. The conviction has been final ever since.
The case did not end there, because of what happened in a Frankfurt police headquarters on the morning of October 1, 2002. A senior officer ordered that the prisoner be threatened with pain to make him talk, and that threat became the subject of a criminal trial of two policemen, a civil claim against the state of Hesse, two failed attempts to reopen the murder case and, in June 2010, a judgment of the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights. The Court held that the threat amounted to inhuman treatment in violation of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, and that Gäfgen's trial had nonetheless been fair.
Gäfgen was born in 1975 and was a German national. By 2002 he was studying law in Frankfurt. He knew the boy's family slightly, and he was out of money that autumn. The trial court later found that he had wanted to keep up a life of luxury among wealthy friends, and that from the start he had intended the child's death.
On Friday, September 27, 2002, Gäfgen killed the boy in Frankfurt am Main. On Monday, September 30, 2002, three days later, the Frankfurt police arrested him in the city and took him in for questioning. The boy's fate was still unknown to the officers when the questioning began.
The events of the next morning were later fixed by the German courts and adopted by the European Court of Human Rights.
The officers on the case still believed the boy might be alive and in danger. Early on October 1, the deputy chief of the Frankfurt police ordered a detective officer to threaten Gäfgen with considerable pain, and to inflict it if necessary, to make him reveal where the child was. Heads of department under the deputy chief had repeatedly opposed the measure. The detective officer carried out the order: in the words of the European Court, Gäfgen was threatened by the police "with intolerable pain" if he refused to disclose the boy's whereabouts. About ten minutes later, out of fear of what had been threatened, he told them. The boy was no longer alive.
The threat was never carried out. The deputy chief later wrote a note for the police file stating that he had believed the child was in mortal danger and that he had acted to save his life. He defended the order in public, and the interrogation became a national argument about whether the German state could ever threaten pain to save a life.
In January 2003 the Frankfurt public prosecutor's office opened criminal investigations against the deputy chief and the detective officer. The two men were tried before the Frankfurt am Main Regional Court in late 2004.
On December 20, 2004, the court convicted the detective officer of coercion committed by an official in the course of his duties, and the deputy chief of inciting a subordinate to commit coercion in the course of his duties. It rejected the argument that the threat had been justified by necessity. The court held that human dignity under Article 1 of the Basic Law is absolute and admits no balancing against other interests, including the interest of saving a life. It then imposed the lightest sanctions the law allowed. The deputy chief received a caution, with a fine of 90 daily rates of 120 euros held in suspense; the detective officer received a caution, with a suspended fine of 60 daily rates of 60 euros. Neither man appealed, and the judgment became final the same day. The deputy chief lost his post as deputy, was later appointed chief of the Police Headquarters for Technology, Logistics and Administration, and retired in 2008.
Gäfgen's own trial opened before the Frankfurt am Main Regional Court on April 9, 2003. On that first day his lawyers asked the court to halt the proceedings altogether, arguing that the threat had made a fair trial impossible. The court refused. It found that the threat of pain had been an unlawful method of interrogation under Article 136a of the Code of Criminal Procedure, under the Basic Law and under Article 3 of the European Convention, but it held that the breach did not bar the prosecution itself.
On the same day the court ruled on the evidence. Every statement Gäfgen had made to the police, to a prosecutor and to an investigating judge since the threat was excluded and could not be used against him. The court did not, however, exclude the other evidence that the police had gathered as a result of what he had said under threat. It weighed the seriousness of the breach against the seriousness of the crime and found in favor of admitting that evidence.
The defendant was told that his earlier statements could not be used. He then made a fresh and full confession in open court. The court based its findings on that confession; the other evidence was not used to prove his guilt.
On July 28, 2003, the court gave judgment. It convicted Gäfgen of murder in conjunction with a further offense under section 239a of the Criminal Code resulting in death, and of a separate offense, and sentenced him to life imprisonment. It also declared that his guilt was of particular gravity. That finding mattered for the future: under German law a prisoner serving life may ordinarily be considered for release after fifteen years, and a finding of particular gravity rules that out and leaves the true length of the term to a later court. The judgment counted his confession at trial in his favor, while noting that he would have been convicted without it. Speaking before sentence, Gäfgen asked for a punishment that would treat him hard but not destroy him.
Gäfgen appealed on points of law. He argued that the proceedings should have been stopped and that all the evidence flowing from the threat should have been excluded. On May 21, 2004, the Federal Court of Justice dismissed the appeal as ill-founded under its summary procedure, holding that review of the judgment had shown no legal error to the defendant's disadvantage. It ordered him to bear the costs, including the necessary expenses of the joint plaintiffs.
He then went to the Federal Constitutional Court, alleging violations of his human dignity under Article 1 of the Basic Law and of Article 104, which protects persons held in custody. On December 14, 2004, a three-judge chamber of the court's Second Senate unanimously declined to accept the complaint for decision and found it inadmissible. It held that the trial court had already remedied the breach by excluding his statements, that his complaint had not explained why a bar to prosecution was constitutionally required, and that his objection to the use of the other evidence had not been raised in the appeal to the Federal Court of Justice and so could not be heard. The decision was final.
On June 15, 2005, Gäfgen lodged an application against Germany with the European Court of Human Rights. He complained that the threat had been torture under Article 3 of the Convention, and that the use at trial of evidence obtained through it had denied him a fair trial under Article 6.
A Chamber of the Court declared the application partly admissible on April 10, 2007. On June 30, 2008, it gave judgment. By six votes to one, the Chamber held that Gäfgen could no longer claim to be the victim of a violation of Article 3, because the German courts had acknowledged the breach and had afforded redress by excluding his statements and convicting the officers. By six votes to one, it found no violation of Article 6.
Gäfgen asked for the case to be referred to the Grand Chamber, and a panel accepted the request on December 1, 2008. The Grand Chamber held a public hearing in Strasbourg on March 18, 2009, and delivered its judgment on June 1, 2010.
On the threat itself, the Grand Chamber found it established that on the morning of October 1, 2002, Gäfgen had been threatened by the police with intolerable pain to make him disclose the child's whereabouts. It held that the threat had attained the minimum level of severity to fall within Article 3, and that it was "sufficiently serious to amount to inhuman treatment," but that it "did not reach the level of cruelty required to attain the threshold of torture." The Court repeated that Article 3 allows no exception and no balancing of interests, and that torture or inhuman treatment "cannot be inflicted even in circumstances where the life of an individual is at risk."
The harder question was whether Germany had already put the matter right. The Court accepted that the German courts had acknowledged the violation "expressly and in an unequivocal manner." It held, however, that acknowledgment was not enough. The fines imposed on the two officers were, in its words, "almost token" and "manifestly disproportionate" to a breach of one of the core rights of the Convention. The appointment of the deputy chief to head a police authority after his conviction raised, the Court said, "serious doubts" about the authorities' response. And Gäfgen's claim for compensation had been pending in the German courts for years without a decision. By eleven votes to six, the Grand Chamber held that he could still claim to be a victim, and by eleven votes to six that there had been a violation of Article 3.
On the fairness of the trial, the Court found a causal link between the threat and the evidence the police had gathered as a direct result of it. It then looked at what the Frankfurt court had actually relied on. The verdict rested on Gäfgen's fresh confession at trial; the other evidence had been used to test that confession and not as proof of guilt. The failure to exclude the tainted evidence, the Court held, "did not have a bearing on the applicant's conviction and sentence." By eleven votes to six it found no violation of Article 6.
Gäfgen had asked for no money for damage, because what he wanted was a retrial, and the Court made no award. For his costs in Strasbourg it awarded 4,000 euros less the legal aid he had received, a net sum of 1,723.40 euros, by ten votes to seven. Three judges wrote a joint opinion agreeing on Article 3 but finding that Article 6 had also been breached; six judges joined a dissent on Article 6, arguing that the admission of real evidence obtained through a breach of Article 3 had made the trial unfair; and six judges dissented on the victim-status and Article 3 findings.
Gäfgen used the Strasbourg judgment to try to reopen his case. German law allows a final criminal conviction to be reopened where the European Court has found a violation of the Convention and the judgment rests on that violation, and also where new facts emerge. His lawyers relied on both grounds.
The Darmstadt Regional Court, which had jurisdiction, rejected the application in November 2011. It held that the Frankfurt verdict rested solely on the confession Gäfgen had made at the main trial, and that the police statements obtained after the threat had been excluded and so could not have founded the conviction. The facts about the interrogation that had emerged in the officers' own trial were not new, it added, because the Frankfurt court had known of the police conduct from the outset.
Gäfgen appealed. On June 29, 2012, the Higher Regional Court in Frankfurt am Main rejected his complaint (file 1 Ws 3/12). The breach found in the investigation, it held, had no influence on the confession at the main trial, on which the conviction essentially rested.
In December 2005 Gäfgen applied for legal aid to sue the state of Hesse for compensation over the threat. The Frankfurt am Main Regional Court refused legal aid in August 2006, and the Frankfurt Court of Appeal dismissed his appeal in February 2007. It accepted that the officers had breached their duties, but found no proof that the threat had caused the psychological harm he alleged, and considered that the exclusion of his statements and the convictions of the officers had already given him satisfaction. On January 19, 2008, the Federal Constitutional Court quashed that decision as a breach of the equal right of access to the courts and sent the matter back.
On August 4, 2011, the Frankfurt am Main Regional Court ordered the state of Hesse to pay Gäfgen 3,000 euros plus interest for a serious violation of his human dignity, and dismissed his claim for at least 10,000 euros and for further damages, including for the trauma he said he had suffered. In October 2012 the Higher Regional Court in Frankfurt rejected Hesse's appeal, and the award became final. A dispute followed with the trustee in his private insolvency over whether the money belonged to his creditors, and in September 2013 the Frankfurt local court ruled, in a decision open to challenge, that he could keep it.
Gäfgen has served his sentence in Hesse. While in custody he passed the first state examination in law and wrote a book about what he presented as a moral change, and he made an attempt to set up a foundation for victims of crime. He also changed his name, with a view to his prospects of returning to society.
Because of the finding of particular gravity, the length of Gäfgen's term was never fixed at sentencing. In 2017 he applied for his life sentence to be suspended on probation, and the sentence-enforcement chamber of the Kassel Regional Court, which had jurisdiction over his place of custody, began its review that autumn. In May 2019 the Kassel court refused release. It relied in large part on a psychiatric expert who considered him still dangerous, and it set the minimum term to be served at 23 years, which meant that no release was possible before September 2025.
In mid-2024 Gäfgen applied again. A new expert report by a forensic psychologist was completed in June 2025 and sent to the parties in July. The Frankfurt am Main public prosecutor's office, relying on that report and on a statement from the institution holding him, asked the Kassel court in July 2025 not to suspend the life sentence. At that time he was not receiving any relaxations of custody, such as escorted leave. The 23-year minimum term was reached in September 2025, and the decision on his application lay with the Kassel court. As of July 2025 he remained in custody in Hesse.
Three rules of German law shaped the case. The first is Article 1 of the Basic Law, which declares human dignity inviolable; the Frankfurt court that tried the two officers held that this guarantee is absolute and cannot be weighed against the duty to save a life, which is why the defense of necessity failed. The civil court of 2011 treated the protection of persons in custody under Article 104 of the Basic Law as absolute as well.
The second is Article 136a of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which forbids threats and other improper methods of questioning and bars the use of statements obtained by them. The trial court applied it to every statement Gäfgen made after the threat. It did not carry the bar over to the further evidence those statements had led to: German courts did not give the exclusion the long-range effect known in German law as Fernwirkung, and the Frankfurt court weighed the interests involved and admitted that evidence. The Federal Court of Justice let the judgment stand without further reasons, and the European Court held that the trial was fair because the verdict rested on the confession given in open court.
The third is the structure of a German life sentence. A prisoner serving life may be considered for release on probation after fifteen years. Where the trial court has found particular gravity of guilt, that is not possible, and the sentence-enforcement chamber later decides how much longer must be served before release can be considered. In Gäfgen's case that chamber, at the Kassel Regional Court, fixed the figure at 23 years.
Gäfgen alleged in Strasbourg that he had suffered further mistreatment during the questioning on October 1, 2002. The Grand Chamber did not find any of those allegations proven, and it confined its finding to the threat of intolerable pain.
The use of the evidence that followed from the threat divided the Court. Eleven judges held that the fairness of the trial was saved by the confession Gäfgen gave in open court after he had been told his earlier statements could not be used. Six judges considered that admitting real evidence obtained through a breach of Article 3 made the whole trial unfair, whatever the defendant later said.
Gäfgen's argument that his conviction rested on the threat was rejected at every level of the German courts and, on the question of fairness, in Strasbourg. No court has questioned his guilt of the murder, which he admitted at trial.
1975: Magnus Gäfgen is born.
September 27, 2002: The boy is killed in Frankfurt am Main.
September 30, 2002: Gäfgen is arrested in Frankfurt.
October 1, 2002: On the deputy chief's order, a detective officer threatens Gäfgen with intolerable pain during questioning.
January 2003: Prosecutors open investigations against the deputy chief and the detective officer.
April 9, 2003: Trial opens at the Frankfurt am Main Regional Court; his police statements are excluded.
July 28, 2003: Conviction for murder, with other charges; life imprisonment, particular gravity of guilt.
May 21, 2004: Federal Court of Justice dismisses the appeal on points of law.
December 14, 2004: Federal Constitutional Court declines his complaint as inadmissible.
December 20, 2004: The deputy chief and the detective officer are convicted and cautioned with suspended fines.
June 15, 2005: Application lodged with the European Court of Human Rights.
January 19, 2008: Federal Constitutional Court reopens his legal-aid claim against Hesse.
June 30, 2008: Chamber judgment finds no violation.
June 1, 2010: Grand Chamber finds a violation of Article 3 and no violation of Article 6.
August 4, 2011: Frankfurt am Main Regional Court awards him 3,000 euros against Hesse.
November 2011: Darmstadt Regional Court rejects his retrial application.
June 29, 2012: Higher Regional Court in Frankfurt rejects his appeal on the retrial.
October 2012: Higher Regional Court in Frankfurt rejects Hesse's appeal on the award.
2017: He applies for release on probation.
May 2019: Kassel Regional Court refuses release and sets a minimum term of 23 years.
Mid-2024: He applies for release again.
July 2025: Prosecutors ask the Kassel court not to suspend the sentence.
September 2025: The 23-year minimum term is reached.