German Lawyer/Author Burkhard Benecken Throws In His Lot With Söring

He may live to regret it, as many other lawyers have.

Burkhard Benecken and Hans Reinhardt are German criminal-defense lawyers and minor celebrities. They’ve written a book called “Inside Criminal Defense: Advocates of Evil” (g) and host a podcast of the same name. Now personally, as a former criminal-defense lawyer, I would never have called myself an “advocate of evil”. But that’s a question of taste.

On September 11, Jens Söring posted on his Instagram and Facebook pages that he had had a “working lunch” with Benecken. Söring often posts things he later regrets and deletes, so I took the precaution of making a screenshot.

We now have some idea what the “working lunch” was about: Söring wanted to convince Benecken to buy his innocence story. Amazingly enough, Benecken seems to have swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. The Amazon blurb for a book by Benecken and Reinhardt scheduled for publication in 2023 reads:

Jens Söring was sentenced in the USA for a supposed [supposed?] double-murder despite questionable evidence — he spent 33 years unjustly imprisoned. Is this kind of miscarriage of justice unthinkable in Germany? Definitely not!

[Jens Söring wurde in den USA wegen angeblichen Doppelmordes trotz fragwürdiger Beweislage verurteilt – 33 Jahre verbrachte er zu Unrecht im Gefängnis. Ein solches Fehlurteil ist in Deutschland undenkbar? Mitnichten!]

This is amazing: The Wright report (g), my articles in the FAZ (g) "Das System Söring” (g, over 1 million downloads!), and “Nebelkerzen” (g) have utterly destroyed Söring’s innocence story, convincing hundreds of thousands of people of the undeniable truth: Söring was fairly convicted of murdering Derek and Nancy Haysom based on overwhelming evidence. In his Tiktok videos, where he seems to put most of his effort now, Söring rarely even mentions his innocence story anymore, and when he does, only in superficial soundbites clearly aimed at an audience of teenagers who know nothing about his case.

Yet even at this late date, Söring was still able to find someone who apparently believes him. And not just anyone, a lawyer no less! Has Benecken not read a single page of the Wright report? Has he not listened to a single episode of Das System Söring? Apparently not!

And I can guess why. As we know from Siegfried Stang’s book and Das System Söring, Söring is well aware that there is now an ocean of information online proving his innocence story to be false. Since Söring cannot prevail on the facts, he tries to pre-emptively discredit people who question his innocence claims by claiming they don’t exist, or they’re using a fake identity, or they’re “crazy” and “obsessed” with him, or they have undisclosed motives for “attacking” and “harassing” him. He probably said something like this to Benecken: “Don’t pay any attention to Andrew Hammel, Siegfried Stang, Terry Wright, Kenneth Beever, William Holdsworth, Ricky Gardner, Annabel H., CCC Film and Television, Argon Labs, Stefan Niggemeier, Deutschlandfunk, Matthias Dell, and about 14 other people. They’re all out to get me. Every single one of them!”

I have a friendly collegial word of warning for Burkhard Benecken: If you got a little bit suspicious when Söring began pre-emptively attacking all sorts of people you’d never heard of, follow that instinct. Then reconsider working with Jens Söring. Lawyers have a way of getting burned when they associate themselves with him. How do I know? Because it’s happened in the past! Let’s review a list of lawyers whom Jens Söring has put in uncomfortable spots:

Lawyer #1: Steven Rosenfield

Take Söring’s current American lawyer Steven Rosenfield. In his 1995 e-book “Mortal Thoughts”, Jens Söring told a long and embarrassing story about an alleged plot by Rosenfield to sell access to a favorable witness in return for cash, which would have been a gross violation of legal ethics. You can read the story in Söring’s own words here, although remember: Nothing Söring says about his case can ever be taken at face value. At any rate, Rosenfield seems to have forgiven Söring, and now represents him.

Lawyer #2: Richard Neaton

Or consider Richard Neaton. Neaton was one of Söring’s two privately-hired trial attorneys at his 1990 Virginia trial, the other being the Virginia criminal-law expert William Cleaveland (whom Söring never mentions). After Söring was convicted based on “overwhelming” evidence, Söring took the customary step of blaming his trial lawyers instead of his multiple, corroborated confessions. As you can see above, Söring even claimed that if Benecken had represented him instead of Neaton and Cleaveland, Söring would have gotten off. Flattery, as Lynn Anderson once sang, will get you everywhere.

Every appeals court to review Söring’s argument that Neaton and Cleaveland were incompetent rejected his claims unanimously, without a single dissenting vote. Not one of the dozens of experienced appeals-court judges thought that Neaton and Cleaveland made any serious mistakes at all. But that didn’t stop Söring from taking every opportunity to drag Neaton through the mud, accusing him not only of incompetence and dishonesty, but even of being mentally ill. Are Söring’s accusations justified? Did Neaton and Cleaveland do a bad job representing him? Well, we could easily find out if Söring would sign a simple one-page waiver form allowing Neaton and Cleaveland to ignore attorney-client privilege and address Söring’s accusations in full.

Söring has never done so, and never will. Just as he will never ask for DNA testing of the evidence in his case.

Lawyer #3: John Grisham

Söring managed to convince American lawyer and best-selling author John Grisham to become an advocate for his innocence. As a result, Grisham made a bunch of rather incautious statements about Söring’s case, and even wrote a blurb for Söring’s 2021 German-language book “Return to Life”. The problem for Grisham? Most of the claims he made on Söring’s behalf were either exaggerated or misleading. He claims to have read himself into the case, but I see little evidence of that. He seems to have relied mainly on the “Media Pack” of one-sided selective bits of information put together by Söring and his lawyers.

Grisham has remained silent on Söring’s case for quite some time now, and his silence speaks volumes. His last public statement on it, as far as I can tell, was the blurb for Söring’s 2021 book, but that could have been arranged in early 2020, when Söring signed his book deal, or even before that. Since then, Grisham hasn’t said a word in support of Söring. Neither have his other American supporters, such as Jason Flom or Martin Sheen.

I have offered to debate John Grisham on the Söring case anywhere he likes, in any format, with travel at my expense. I have offered to share with him my comprehensive archive on the case, which contains hundreds of documents he does not seem to have ever read.

Grisham has refused.

Lawyer #4: Stephan Grulert

In a video feature broadcast in February 2022 by the German television show “Galileo” to an audience of hundreds of thousands, the Hamburg media lawyer Stephan Grulert allowed himself to be identified as a “friend” of Söring and was quoted praising Söring’s ability to withstand decades of imprisonment (which is fair enough):

Yet this video feature proved embarassing for all concerned. The reporters who created it swallowed Söring’s innocence narrative unquestioningly, even re-creating the scene Söring invented in which Elizabeth Haysom, blood on her forearms, confessed to killing her own parents. As we know, none of this ever happened, and it is a libel of Elizabeth Haysom.

After numerous complaints, the television channel which produces “Gaileo”, ProSieben, withdrew the feature from all of its platforms and issued a humiliating apology:

It was a clear journalistic mistake to describe Jens Söring as innocent in the feature. Our internal review process did not work the way it should have. We have since corrected this internal procedure.

[Es war ein klarer handwerklicher, journalistischer Fehler, Jens Söring in dem Beitrag als unschuldig zu bezeichnen. Unsere internen Abnahmeprozesse haben nicht so funktioniert, wie es sein muss. Diesen internen Prozess-Fehler haben wir korrigiert.]

You can’t find the “Galileo” feature online anymore, but you can download it here.

Yet that wasn’t the last unfortunate experience Grulert had as a result of his association with Söring. Grulert’s law firm, Beutler Grulert Brandt, sued me on behalf of Jens Söring for a blog post in which I conducted a fair and balanced assessment of whether Jens Söring might be a continuing danger and came to the conclusion the likelihood was “very low”. (As you can guess by the fact that the blog post is still online, Grulert’s law firm lost the case.)

Grulert and an associate showed up to court on June 3 in Frankfurt, but Jens Söring did not. The hapless associate did his best, but the three judges on the panel grilled him so intensely that Grulert and the associate asked for a pause, left the courtroom for a few minutes, and then came back in saying they wanted to withdraw the lawsuit. The judges let them do so. The result was a complete victory for me — and for freedom of expression — and an embarassing public defeat for Grulert and his law firm.

Söring will, of course, have to pay my lawyer’s fees as a result of his defeat. I doubt he’ll try to sue any more of his critics, but if he does, we’re amply prepared and ready to win again…and again…and again.

Lawyer #5: André Miegel

The final lawyer who probably regrets his association with Jens Söring is André Miegel, a criminal-defense lawyer from Munich. This brings us back to that since-deleted video feature about Söring. The producers apparently contacted Miegel to serve as a “legal expert” providing an analysis of Jens Söring’s case. Miegel was quoted several times saying peculiar things such as: “He thought that as the son of a diplomat, not much would happen to him [for a double-murder?], at least not the death penalty” and “I’ve never seen a case in which someone was ultimately convicted on the basis of a sock-print.” Indeed he hasn’t, because Söring was convicted not on the basis of a sock-print, but because of his richly detailed, amply corroborated confessions, which contain information only the killer could have known.

Lawyer #6: Burkhard Benecken?

We now come back to the original focus of this post, Burkhard Benecken’s apparent decision to run with Jens Söring’s story. By now, I would hope Benecken is having second thoughts about this fateful error. Of course, Jens Söring can be very plausible and persuasive, but convicted fraudsters like Söring often are, and it’s impossible to tell whether murderers like Söring are guilty simply by their appearance and behavior. After all, he’s had 33 years to perfect his spiel.

If anybody should know these things, a criminal-defense lawyer should. Take it from me — a criminal-defense lawyer.