Former national soccer player Jérôme Boateng refused to testify in his appeal process regarding the allegation of bodily harm. “He denies criminal activity, but otherwise will not comment on the matter,” said his lawyer on Thursday before the Munich I District Court.
Boateng’s defense attorneys emphasized that their client was “entitled to a fair trial,” especially given the extensive reporting about him in the run-up to the trial.
Boateng had previously rejected a court proposal for an agreement. He could not “reconcile this with his conscience,” said his lawyer on Thursday.
The court had suggested that the process be ended “as unproblematicly as possible and without great effort”, but still “appropriately”. In this way you can save yourself a “comprehensive and unpleasant procedure,” said judge Andreas Forstner.
Before that, the litigants had held a so-called legal talk, for which the process had been interrupted immediately after it had started. What exactly the content of this legal talk was was not initially known.
It might have been possible, for example, for the parties to the litigation to withdraw their appeal and for the judgment of the district court, which Boateng had sentenced last year to pay a fine of 1.8 million euros for assaulting his ex-girlfriend, to become final. Judge Forstner emphasized right at the beginning of the appeal hearing that he considered the earlier judgment to be well-founded.
Even if the negotiation will certainly be “exhausting and lengthy”, Boateng does not want to accept the offer of an agreement, the lawyers said.
