Nimt killer Lichtenstrasser’s appeal fails, life sentence stands

Nimt killer Ernst Lichtenstrasser has failed with an attempt to appeal against his conviction and sentence.

This comes after he was found guilty of murdering the two top executives of the Namibian Institute of Mining and Technology (Nimt) five years ago.

Judge Christie Liebenberg struck Lichtenstrasser’s application to be allowed to appeal to the Supreme Court from the roll of the High Court yesterday, after finding that Lichtenstrasser has no prospects of success with an appeal.

Liebenberg convicted Lichtenstrasser (63) on two counts of murder and six other charges in November last year.

On 29 April this year, he sentenced Lichtenstrasser to life imprisonment on each of the two murder charges.

In the verdict that he delivered in November, Liebenberg found that the evidence he heard during a trial that started in February 2021, proved that Lichtenstrasser murdered Nimt executive director Eckhart Mueller (72) and his deputy, Heimo Hellwig (60), by shooting them at the Nimt head office at Arandis in the Erongo region on 15 April 2019.

Liebenberg remarked during Lichtenstrasser’s sentencing that the motive for the murders appears to have been that he wanted to eliminate Mueller, who had decided to transfer him from Nimt’s Tsumeb campus, where he was employed, to Keetmanshoop.

Lichtenstrasser resisted the transfer to Keetmanshoop, but Mueller insisted that he had to comply with the decision.

Hellwig was also gunned down because he was at the scene when Mueller was shot, the judge added during the sentencing.
“It is my considered view that such violent, irrational and unpredictable behaviour renders the accused a danger to society,” Liebenberg said.

The evidence on which Lichtenstrasser was found guilty included a confession that he made to police officers at Walvis Bay in May 2019, about a month after his arrest, DNA results that linked him to a pistol found buried in the desert near Arandis a month after the murders, and ballistics evidence that linked the same firearm to cartridge cases found at the murder scene and also at Lichtenstrasser’s home at Otavi.

The grounds on which Lichtenstrasser wanted to appeal to the Supreme Court against his conviction included claims that his constitutional rights, including the right to receive a fair trial and to have his dignity respected, were violated by police officers before he made the confession, which he later disputed, and that he suspected the court was biased against him during his trial.

In his ruling yesterday, Liebenberg said during the trial he was convinced the evidence proved Lichtenstrasser was in his sober senses and had the required mental capacity to waive his legal rights when he made the confession.

He found that the evidence proved Lichtenstrasser’s rights were not violated, and for that reason the confession was ruled admissible as evidence, Liebenberg said.

“The evidence established beyond reasonable doubt that it was [Lichtenstrasser] who decided to make a confession without any undue influence exerted on him or coaching by the police, as alleged,” the judge added.

He also said concerns raised by Lichtenstrasser about the credibility of a ballistics expert who concluded that cartridge cases found at the murder scene and at Lichtenstrasser’s house had been fired by the pistol discovered buried in the desert near Arandis are “no more than speculation and conjecture”.

A “disquieting aspect” of Lichtenstrasser’s attack on the credibility of the ballistics expert is that he was given time to get an independent expert from South Africa to also examine the firearm and cartridge cases, and that the independent expert was not called to testify after he had done his examination, Liebenberg remarked as well.

On the sentences handed to Lichtenstrasser, the judge said he gave a detailed explanation of how he reached the conclusion that Lichtenstrasser was a danger to society and had to be removed from it, although he did not have a previous history of violent behaviour.

Lichtenstrasser has not been represented by a defence lawyer since he dismissed his lawyer after he was found guilty.
Deputy prosecutor general Antonia Verhoef represented the state.