Eight years for parents who killed disabled daughter in Switzerland

The public prosecutor had demanded custodial sentences of 18 years each for murder, arguing there would certainly have been opportunities for the child to make progress. Keystone-SDA

A couple who killed their severely disabled daughter in Hägglingen, northern Switzerland, have each been sentenced to eight years in prison.

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The Bremgarten District Court found the couple guilty of intentional homicide and attempted homicide. The verdicts are not yet final.

On May 6, 2020, the now 32-year-old woman and the 34-year-old man drugged their three-year-old daughter with ecstasy and then suffocated her. Because he had procured the ecstasy, the man was also sentenced to a conditional fine for violating the Narcotics Act.

He was also found guilty of attempted murder. In October 2019, the parents had already tried to kill the child once with an overdose of sleeping pills in the bottle. However, the child woke up again. The court ordered the two German citizens to be deported for ten years each.

The child had suffered from severe cerebral impairment since birth. She would have needed intensive round-the-clock care for the rest of her life.

The parents claimed that they had relieved their daughter of her increasingly severe pain, cramps, paralysis and other ailments out of love. Their lawyers had pleaded for manslaughter and partial prison sentences of three years each. The defendants had acted under great emotional stress, the lawyers said.

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The public prosecutor had demanded custodial sentences of 18 years each for murder, arguing there would certainly have been opportunities for the child to make progress. However, the child had been a nuisance to the accused and they had wanted to get rid of it, the prosecutor said, adding that in doing so, they had acted in a blatantly selfish and unscrupulous manner.

Acquittal for grandmother

The grandmother of the child was acquitted of the charge of complicity. The prosecution had accused her of not having prevented her daughter and her boyfriend from killing the child.

The grandmother had claimed that she had not known what to do. She said she had strongly advised against the act and supported the young family as much as possible.

Translated from German by DeepL/ts

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