Hoyzer may not serve sentence

While former referee Robert Hoyzer conspired to change the outcome of matches, his defense lawyers and even prosecutors claim that it might not be a criminal offence.

A federal appeals court in Leipzig was expected to rule on Hoyzer's case this week, but the court will wait until Dec. 15, because state prosecutor Hartmut Schneider said the conviction should be overturned.

A lower court sentenced Hoyzer to two-plus years in prison last year. The nation's football association also banned Hoyzer for life after he admitted to conspiring to fix matches in the German Cup and in the Bundesliga's lower divisions.

Hoyzer was convicted along with several others of being an accessory to fraud, but Schneider said Hoyzer's actions do not technically qualify as fraud.

"It's an instance of common trickery," Schneider said, "but there's no way we can criminally prosecute it."

Schneider cited the precedent of a man who was accused of fraud in 1961 after placing bets on horse races, the outcomes of which he already knew. The man was found innocent.

The judge was highly critical of the Berlin court that convicted Hoyzer last November, calling its verdict "remarkably superficial."

A prosecutor review of convictions is a basic element of the German legal system.

"A state prosecutor is always asked to review appeal cases," Berlin-based criminal lawyer Barbara Petersen told DW-Online. "And while it's rare that one should ask for a guilty verdict to be overturned, it has happened in the past."

The fact that Hoyzer was convicted of fraud also opened up a range of legal questions.

"Fraud is one of the most complicated corpus delicti that we have," Petersen said. "There are more than 40 small-print pages of commentary in the criminal code qualifying what it is. This case is also quite out of the ordinary, so it's no wonder that there are so many opportunities to call the verdict into question."

Hoyzer attracted attention of investigators after a German Cup match between first-division Hamburg and third-division Paderborn in August 2004. Hoyzer awarded two controversial penalties to Paderborn and sent one of Hamburg's players off with a disputed red card. Paderborn went on to claim a 4-2 victory.

During a 2005 investigation, Hoyzer confessed to conspiring to fix that and other matches in conjunction with a ring of gamblers who had placed large bets on the unlikely outcomes.

That sparked outrage among fans and fears among the sport's functionaries that the sport's image had been damage with the 2006 World Cup on the horizon.

Hoyzer's defense lawyers argued that there was no way he could guarantee a specific match result and thus he did not technically "fix" matches, despite his shenanigans. Hoyzer's defense team was delighted with the course of Tuesday's proceedings.

"The court showed that it was skeptical," lawyer Thomas Hermes said. "We hope that it decides in our favor."

Schneider urged betting companies to re-write their legal conditions of business to help prosecutors press charges of fraud in cases of attempted match-fixing.

Source: euFootball.BIZ © Copyright 2006 - All rights reserved.