Lucerne journalist sentenced for trespassing
A journalist was found guilty of trespassing after entering a squatted house in Lucerne while working on a report. The Lucerne District Court sentenced her to a fine of 500 francs.
She had wanted to write a report for the portal Zentralplus - and was convicted of trespassing. Zentralplus is now reporting on the case. The verdict raises questions among readers of the online medium (Screenshot Centralplus.ch).
The defendant could not have assumed that the owner of the property would tolerate her stay, said a brief explanation of the verdict, which was published late Friday evening. The journalist had known that talks between the squatters and the owner had failed and that the squatters expected to be evicted.
In April 2016, the group "Gundula" had occupied a villa on Obergrundstrasse in Lucerne that had been vacant for two years and belonged to Bodum Invest. The 32-year-old theater scholar and journalist Jana Avanzini stayed in the occupied house for several hours on the evening of April 20 because she was working for the online portal Centralplus wanted to write a report.
The public prosecutor's office had discontinued the proceedings against the journalist, but they were reopened following a decision by the cantonal court. The prosecution's penalty order provided for a conditional fine of five daily sentences. Bodum Invest's lawyer applied to the district court for a conditional 20-day sentence, while the defense lawyer asked for an acquittal.
The single judge now came to the conclusion that the defendant wrongly assumed that she was not behaving unlawfully. With appropriate care, she could have avoided this error. There was an avoidable error of prohibition, which is why only a fine was to be imposed instead of a fine.
The proceedings were about property rights and media freedom. The latter could constitute a justification for criminal acts under certain, very restrictive conditions, the court wrote. However, this only applies if the public interest in information is so serious that it justifies the commission of a criminal act. This was not the case here.
Furthermore, the criminal act - in this case, trespassing - would have to be the only way to obtain necessary information for reporting. "Reporting on the squat was not simply impossible without entering the house," the brief states.
In addition to the fine, the court ordered the defendant to pay court costs of almost 1800 francs. In addition, she must pay the private plaintiff a lawyer's fee of 3000 francs. The verdict is not yet legally binding. (SDA)
