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Fritz Yngvar Moen (December 17, 1941 – March
28, 2005) was a Norwegian man wrongfully convicted for two distinct
felony murders, serving a total of 18 years in prison. After the
overturn of the conviction an official inquiry was instigated to
establish what had gone wrong in the authorities' handling of the
case, and on June 25, 2007 the commission dealt a crushing blow to
both the police, the prosecution and the courts in what was
immediately termed the largest justice scandal in Norway of all time.
Moen was deaf with a severe speech impediment. He
was also partly paralyzed, but had normal intelligence and good memory.
Initial conviction and sentencing
He was convicted for two separate rapes and murders,
both in Trondheim:
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Torunn Finstad, who was reported missing on
October 4, 1977 and was found dead on October 6, 1977, after having
been raped and strangled. Moen was indicted by Frostating court for
the crime on April 11, 1978 and convicted and sentenced to 20 years'
imprisonment on May 29 the same year. This sentence was reduced to
16 years on appeal.
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Sigrid Heggheim, who was found dead in September
1976. She had been strangled and an attempt had been made to rape
her. The same court indicted Moen for murder and attempted rape on
September 15, 1981, and on December 18 he was convicted and
sentenced to an additional 5 years. An appeal was rejected.
The prosecuting authorities relied on Moen's
confession to the murders, a confession that appears to have been
coerced by way of intimidation.
Biological samples were collected at both crime
scenes and tested with available technology at the time; but the
samples were since lost and destroyed for reasons that remain unclear.
When Moen was convicted, his defense lawyer, Olav
Hestenes announced: "For the first time at this desk, I allow myself
to say that a travesty of justice has been committed."
The judge, Karl Solberg, reacted furiously and
later applauded the courts verdict. Solberg has become notorious in
actions of miscarriage of justice, being instrumental in the wrongful
incarcerations of Fritz Moen and Atle Hage.
Reversal
Moen's attorney requested a new trial for both
cases on January 2, 2000. The court accepted the requests for the
Sigrid Heggheim case, and on October 7, 2004 judge Wenche Skjæggestad
announced that the court reversed the conviction and acquitted Moen
for the attempted rape and murder of Sigrid Heggheim. The court found
that the forensic evidence was exonerative of Moen, and that in any
case reasonable doubt should have acquitted him in the first place.
Among other things, he had an alibi for the most likely time of the
crime. Also, the forensic evidence indicated that the perpetrator had
pursued the victim across a field, knocked her down, and then tied her
with her own clothes - Moen was partly paralyzed and physically
incapable of these actions.
The court rejected the appeal for a resumption of
the Torunn Finstad case, and on October 13, 2005, the Norwegian
Criminal Cases Review Commission received a preliminary application
for review of the case. When Moen died on March 28, 2005 of natural
causes, it became known that he wanted the case on his behalf to
continue.
In December 2005, it became known that Tor Hepsø, a
convicted felon with a long history of violence, had made a deathbed
confession that he had killed both Sigrid Heggheim and Torunn Finstad.
On June 15, 2006, the Criminal Cases Review Board formally accepted
the application, and on August 24, 2006, Frostating court acquitted
posthumously Fritz Moen also for the rape and murder of Sigrid
Heggheim. It was found that the preponderance of the evidence made the
man with the deathbed confession a more likely suspect, and that
Moen's confession was likely coerced and only included information
that had been made public.
These two acquittals are widely attributed to the
tireless work of his defense attorney John Christian Elden and private
investigator Tore Sandberg.
There is now an expectation that Fritz Moen's
estate will file a civil suit against the Norwegian government for
several tens of millions of Norwegian kroner.
The case has attracted widespread public opinion in
Norway. There are calls for a formal inquiry into the conduct of the
prosecutors and police, and there is even talk of erecting a bust or
statue of Moen in front of the Norwegian Ministry of Justice as a
symbol of the responsibilities of the criminal justice system.
Inquiry
On June 25, 2007 a commission headed by Henry John
Mæland, professor of law at the University of Bergen delivered its
findings to the Norwegian Minister of Justice Knut Storberget. The
commission stated that the principle of objectivity was violated
repeatedly by both the police and the courts. The commission found
that the most important lesson that can be learned from this case is
that the presumption of innocence must be attended by both the public
prosecutors and the courts.
Chair of the commission Mæland stated that
witnesses had been coaxed by the Trondheim police force while at the
same time significant evidence proving the innocence of Moen had been
withheld from the prosecutors and the courts. "Some of the evidence
has basically been hidden within the police reports," Mæland concluded.
The justice minister commented during the press conference that "the
commission's report shows that grave errors have been committed
leading to grave results."
The commissioned was appointed on September 8, 2006
by the Norwegian cabinet. It consisted apart from professor Mæland of
judge Inger Marie Dons Jensen and psychiatrist Ingrid Lycke Ellingsen.
Its mandate was to "find out why Moen was wrongfully convicted and
evaluate whether changes are needed in the criminal justice system to
avoid wrongful convictions in the future".
Infringement (Overgrepet) by Tore Sandberg,
the private investigator involved in Moen's case, was published in
October 2007. The book names police officers and other public servants
instrumental in the Moen's criminal prosecution.
On 5 February 2008, the Standing Committee on
Scrutiny and Constitutional Affairs of the Norwegian Parliament
recommended that a commission be named to investigate and, if
warranted, prosecute for impeachment three of the Norwegian Supreme
Court Justices who presided over the Moen cases. The three were Magnus
Matningsdal, Karin Maria Bruzelius and Eilert Stang Lund. However,
when the case went to the Standing Committee on Justice, it was closed.
Justice:Denied, the only wrongful conviction
magazine in the United States, published an article about Fritz Moen's
case in its Spring 2008 issue: "Exonerated Of Two Murders, Fritz Moen
Posthumously Awarded $4 Million".
The conclusion of the inquiry recommended not to
investigate in order to label responsibility to individual officers or
judicial since "such action would probably lead to the pulverization
of responsibility". As no one wishes to take individual responsibility
for what happened to Fritz Moen, the case is by many bloggers labeled
as the worst example of police and prosecution cowardice in European
history.
Wikipedia.org
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