German Lawyer Burkhard Benecken Becomes Söring's Latest "Useful Idiot": Part I
Who is Burkhard Benecken, the German lawyer who has just published a book claiming the Söring case is a miscarriage of justice?
Wikipedia defines a “useful idiot” as: “A person perceived as propagandizing for a cause—particularly a bad cause originating from a devious, ruthless source—without fully comprehending the cause's goals, and who is cynically being used by the cause's leaders.” I wouldn’t necessarily go that far, but Benecken has certainly allowed himself to be used to propagate Söring’s false claims about his case. But then again, as we’ll see, Benecken is also benefiting from attaching himself to Söring, a minor celebrity. This is a Benecken specialty.
Who is Burkhard Benecken?
Burkhard Benecken is a partner of the law firm of Benecken and Reinhardt, located in Marl, Germany. He lists his main practice area as criminal law. He (and sometimes his law partner Hans Reinhardt) have published popular books on criminal law, including (my translations of their German titles) “Inside the Big House: The Brutal Realities of Everyday Life in German Prisons” (by Benecken alone) and “Inside Criminal Defense: Advocates of Evil” (Advokaten des Bösen). Yes, he says he represents “evil”. I’m not making that up. And he’s not the only German criminal defense lawyer who proclaims himself in league with Satan: Stephan Lucas wrote a book literally called “On the Side of Evil: My Most Spectacular Cases as a Criminal-Defense Attorney”. I’m not really sure why these lawyers describe their clients as “evil”; it certainly wouldn’t make me eager to hire them. Benecken has also written books about the criminal underworld and ethnic crime clans. He’s even written a novel called “Clan Land”.
I’ve read or skimmed a few of these books, they are mainly collections of juicy anecdotes drawn from Benecken’s own practice. So far, I’ve seen no footnotes, legal citations, or analytical depth, and the prose style is breathless and dramatic. Not that there’s anything wrong with that! There’s a market for these books, and they get pretty good reviews online. Benecken also occasionally reports about how the German criminal justice system actually works, not just how it’s supposed to work on paper. That’s valuable, since most Germans have no idea how their legal system works in practice. If you would like to read a serious, thoughtful, well-researched critique of the German criminal-justice system for laypeople, leagues more thoughtful than what Benecken can offer,read this outstanding book about class bias in German justice by the German journalist Ronen Steinke.
In any event, Benecken, on a more superficial level than Steinke, argues that the German criminal justice system often produces inaccurate judgments. Indeed, he’s written two books detailing what he considers to be miscarriages of justice in Germany. That’s all to his credit. If German lawyers publicly criticize flaws in any justice system, that system is more likely to be the American system than their own. One example is the recent interview with Judge Dr. Ralph Guise-Rübe, President of the Hannover Regional Court, in the German daily newspaper Die Welt. In this prejudiced polemic, Guise-Rübe harshly attacks the American criminal justice system — which he clearly knows next to nothing about — while smugly praising German justice as a beacon of righteousness.
To use a good old salty American expression, give me a f*cking break. Fortunately, the readers of Die Welt ripped Guise-Rübe a new a*shole, to use another salty American expression. I subjected his mistake-filled Stammtisch-Niveau interview to a crushing public critique. To this date, Guise-Rübe has not bothered to respond to my fact-based, informed criticisms in any way. To me, that says one thing: He doesn’t know what the f*ck he’s talking about, and more importantly, doesn’t care that he doesn’t know. In my view, his interview is a disgrace to the German judiciary. Benecken, amazingly, is more reasonable and judicious than Guise-Rübe (which is ironic, since Guise-Rübe is a judge), but also screws up. More on that in my next post.
Aside from writing breezy books about German justice, what else is Benecken known for? Well, for one thing, he has an Instagram account in which he posts selfies from various posh locations, often accompanied by women. He also offers short videos with titillating tidbits, such as “Puking in the courtroom”, “Defending Murderers” (“I’ve defended many murderers in court and these cases are often really exciting!”), “The Albanian Mafia Doesn’t Accept Betrayal” (“My client said to me if I snitch on my uncle, [throat-cutting gesture].”).
This last video is typical. It’s short, watch it even if you have no German. Benecken’s gestures and tone of voice tell you all you need to know. As with most of his videos, Benecken looks straight into the camera and tells a short anecdote about one of his cases.
In this one, he talks about conversations he had with one of his clients. I can only assume he obtained his client’s authorization to reveal these facts, since revealing attorney-client conversations without client consent is unethical. Benecken doesn’t mention the client’s name, but since German court proceedings are public, anyone could have sat in the courtroom, if there was a court proceeding, and seen who Benecken was talking about. Further, Benecken actively seeks publicity, so his cases attract more attention than other cases. In this 2016 article in Die Welt (which seems fascinated by him), there’s a photo of Benecken talking to one of his clients, showing the client’s entire body in full profile, with only the face pixellated.
In this next video, Benecken complains that even thought he got his client off, the client still complained to Benecken because the judges said “I’m acquitting you because of the principle of reasonable doubt”:
The client was apparently angry because of the judge’s caveat. Again, Benecken reveals attorney-client communications to his 2,000 followers. One can only assume he obtained a valid written waiver of attorney-client privilege before recording this video. In a car.
Spiegel: Benecken Represents “C-Class and Lower” Celebrities “for the Headlines”
We’ve established that Benecken loves media attention: he gives lots and lots and lots and lots of interviews. In many of these interviews, the hosts ask childish questions such as “How can you defend a murderer?” or “Do you ever lose sleep over what your clients have done?” In the US or UK, journalists are worldly enough to skip this nonsense, because they know their audiences are smart enough to figure out, you know, why defense lawyers exist. Not in Germany, apparently. As we’ve seen, Benecken also writes books full of war stories, and shares tidbits from his working life.
Well, just because he’s media-hungry doesn’t mean he’s a crappy lawyer.
Or does it?
Let’s turn now to a 2016 article in the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel. The title (all of the following quotations are my translations) is “The Peculiar Posturing of Burkhard Benecken”. The subhed is no more complimentary: “[Benecken] is renowned for big headlines. But his reputation is not particularly stellar”. According to Der Spiegel, Benecken “also attracts celebrity clients, generally ranging from Grade C downwards…That is apparently no coincidence. Spiegel research suggests that Benecken is often mainly motivated by the desire to make headlines.” The main theme of the article is Benecken’s work for “trash queen” Gina-Lisa Lohfink, a heavily-tattooed model, “influencer”, TV host, and probably reality TV star at some point (they all end up there). Here we see Ms. Lohfink (right) at a porn-movie awards ceremony in 2012 in the company of apparent award-winner “Aishe Pervers”:
Lohfink, Der Spiegel reports, seems to be very close to Benecken; she refers to him as “my Burkhard”. Benecken represented her during a legal odyssey which began in 2012, when a tape showing Lohfink having sex with two men was leaked to the Internet. During the tape, Lohfink can be heard saying “no”, and claimed this indicated she was refusing consent to the sex. She also claimed the two men had drugged her. The two men denied both claims and stated she was merely refusing consent to being filmed.
The men were eventually cited with a criminal fine (Strafbefehl) for releasing the video to the Internet without Lohfink’s consent. When she later prosecuted them, Lohfink became a temporary hero to “no means no” feminists in Germany. That all soon fell apart. The Tiergarten Local Court in Berlin had experts analyze the tapes, and they concluded that Lohfink was alert, active, and aware of her surroundings during the sex acts, indicating she was not drugged and had refused consent only to the filming (which the men had already been punished for). Criminal charges were dismissed, and Lohfink was fined €24,000 for making a false accusation. The judgment was upheld on appeal. Benecken’s new book claims this was all a terrible injustice to Lohfink.
The Spiegel article goes on to list other instances in which Benecken’s clients didn’t get the results they’d hoped for.
The football coach’s ex-wife. Britta Assauer, ex-wife of famous soccer team manager Rudi Assauer, was sued by a guy who did housework for her and, he claimed, didn’t get paid. Benecken took the case and lost in the trial court: The judge found that the plaintiff had provided a detailed accounting of the work he did, but Benecken had replied with mere vague denials. Benecken appealed and lost again — the appeals court faulted him for filing a brief which contained only “generic stock phrases”. Assauer’s ex-wife claims she provided Benecken with a detailed counter-statement which he did not want to consider.
But Benecken wasn’t done with the case. An article appeared in the Bild tabloid in which Assauer’s ex-wife was quoted as saying she could barely survive on welfare benefits and couldn’t even “afford to go to a restaurant”. She was humiliated by the article and shocked, since she had never spoken to Bild. Bild later confirmed that Benecken had “released” the quotations to them. When Assauer complained to Benecken, she says Benecken laughed and responded: “What are you complaining about? You’re now more famous than Angela Merkel!” Revealing, that. Assauer tells Der Spiegel that she’s convinced he took the case only for its headline potential, and that her legal rights “meant nothing” to him. Benecken denies the accusations.The TV-Hypnotist. TV hypnotist Martin Bolze was charged by a district attorney with potentially violating the medical practitioner’s code during a TV show. Bolze hired Benecken, who Bolze claims showed up at his house in early 2013 and asked for €10,000 or €15,000, claiming he could make the case go away by working out a deal with the prosecutor. Bolze later switched lawyers. The new lawyer wrote the prosecutor challenging the charging papers, and the case was dismissed three days later for lack of evidence, no donation required. Benecken later claimed that he wasn’t asking for the money for himself, but was instead conveying an offer from the prosecutor to drop the case in return for a charitable donation. Nothing in the files, the Spiegel reports, supports this claim.
The TV chef. A minor TV chef hired Benecken to challenge a photo of him speeding. Benecken claimed it was really someone wearing a mask of the TV chef. Case lost.
Maybe all these cases were flukes! Most German lawyers would disagree. Benecken is famous — well, actually infamous — well, actually notorious — in German legal circles. There’s hardly a lawyer or judge in Germany who doesn’t know who he is, or who doesn’t have a strong opinion about him. I’ve heard some of those opinions. I’m not going to share them, but I can say that this post gives you an idea of what those opinions are like. I should note that I could find no evidence Benecken has been censured by the bar and that he does win some cases — and often boasts about them on Instagram.
So, Burkhard Benecken has convinced another C-list (D-list?) celebrity, Jens Söring, to associate with him. Or perhaps Söring reached out to Benecken. In any case, they were made for each other. Stay tuned for Part II of this post, in which I describe how Benecken fell for Söring’s lies hook, line, and sinker.
In der Welt ist ein Interview mit Burkhard Benecken. Darin äußert er sich auch zu Söring. Das Interview hat niemand geringeres geführt, als Katja Mitic. Interessant ist, dass sie nun etwas zurückrudert und auch etwas kritischer Söring hinterfragt.
Hier mal ein Beispiel:
WELT: Nehmen wir also einen wesentlichen Punkt aus dem Fall Söring, der zu seiner – wie er sagt – falschen Verurteilung geführt haben soll. Das Geständnis, bei dem er gelogen haben will, um seine Freundin vor dem elektrischen Stuhl zu retten.
Benecken: Falsche Geständnisse gibt es viel häufiger als man denkt. Gerade in Aussage-gegen-Aussage-Konstellationen machen Gerichte oft das Angebot einer Bewährungsstrafe für den Fall eines Geständnisses. Da „nicken“ viele Angeklagte auch unzutreffende Vorwürfe ab, um nicht das Risiko einer Haftstrafe einzugehen, obwohl sie unschuldig sind.
Ähm ja, also Söring hat die Vorwürfe nicht einfach abgenickt. Aber das wird Herr Benecken sicherlich wissen, wenn er sich so intensiv mit dem Fall beschäftigt hat 😉
Das Interview bietet noch mehr interessante Einblicke, wie Sörings "useful idiot" funktioniert und er den Fall sieht.
Hier der Link dazu: https://www.welt.de/vermischtes/plus245430158/Gericht-Zu-viel-Taeterschutz-Diese-These-ist-ein-Maerchen.html