Five men receive millions in compensation after being wrongfully imprisoned in an attempted murder case; a Danish appeals court rules in their favor and awards them compensation.
According to TV2, the Glostrup court ordered five men to pay a total of 9.5 million Danish kroner in compensation, after they had been sentenced to life imprisonment by a lower court in a case related to attempted murder, before being acquitted by the appeals court.
The compensation awarded to the men ranged between 1,436,900 kroner and 2,443,043.44 kroner per person, according to the Danish news agency Ritzau.
One man spent three years and four months in pretrial detention before being released after being acquitted. The case highlighted the scale of compensation that can be awarded to individuals detained for years before being cleared of the charges against them.
According to figures from the Danish National Police, the total compensation paid to citizens for unlawful detention during the past year amounted to 50.4 million Danish kroner.
Accusations of attempted murder of members of a rival gang
The five men were charged with attempting to murder members of the Loyal To Familia gang, known as LTF, during incidents in May 2020.
The lower court sentenced the five men to life imprisonment, but the Eastern Court of Appeal overturned those sentences and acquitted them. By the time of their acquittal and release, the men had already spent years in pretrial detention.
Defense attorney Michael Juul Eriksen, who represents one of the men, said in previous statements that his client had spent 3 years and 4 months in prison.
The lawyer explained on Thursday that four of the five men spent roughly equal periods in detention, while the fifth man's detention period was shorter.
Compensation was provided according to specific rates.
Carsten Norton, a criminal affairs commentator on TV 2 News, said the compensation amounts awarded in the case were expected, as they were calculated according to specific compensation rates applied in cases of unlawful detention.
Norton added that the value of the compensation corresponds to the time the individuals concerned spent in prison, noting that these amounts are determined according to fixed rules and rates when it is proven that the person’s detention was not justified.
He considered the case to be remarkable because of the discrepancy between the ruling issued by the court of first instance and the decision of the Court of Appeal, as the first court sentenced them to life imprisonment, before the Court of Appeal ended up acquitting the five men.
Norton said that such cases are rare and do not occur often, but they do happen sometimes when the outcomes of major cases before the Court of Appeal change, explaining that this is due to other judicial bodies reviewing and evaluating the evidence.
He added that a different court hearing the case could lead to a different assessment of the evidence, which could change the outcome of the trial, even after severe sentences such as life imprisonment have been issued.
