Former Groningen mayor Koen Schuiling, who was convicted of criminal trespass, wants to summon police chief Martin Sitalsing and chief public prosecutor Diederik Greive to the court as witnesses. The reason for this is the reconstruction NRC published in September, six months after Schuiling’s conviction. This reconstruction, in which the chief commissioner and the chief officer participated, showed that important information was missing from the criminal file and that prejudices about the alleged sexual behavior of the homosexual mayor played an important role in the run-up to the conviction.
The preliminary hearing of the appeal was held at the court in Zwolle on Wednesday afternoon, following the conviction of Schuiling by the police judge in March this year to a 250 euro fine for masturbating behind the wheel on the highway. Months before that conviction, Schuiling was forced to resign early as mayor.
“Schuiling has not had a fair trial, and cannot get one anymore,” said lawyer Peter Koops at the start of the hearing. Schuiling himself will speak at a later substantive hearing, his lawyer announced.
Lawyer Koops also wants to call the truck driver, who allegedly saw Schuiling masturbating behind the wheel on the highway, as a witness. He also wants to hear from a professor who specializes in eyewitness statements, who stated in NRC that the truck driver’s statement should not have been used as decisive evidence for a conviction. He also wants to summon Schuiling’s spokesperson at the time of his mayoralty. This could provide more clarity about the leaking of confidential police and judicial documents to the press before the case was brought to court.
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Prejudices
“Tunnel vision, ignoring the medical file, violation of the presumption of innocence and the fear of being accused of class justice,” Koops concluded about the actions of the police and the judiciary. “The result is reverse class justice. Schuiling was convicted not despite the fact that he was mayor, but he was mayor.”
According to Koops, the reconstruction in NRC has revealed numerous new facts that make it necessary to hear the witnesses. For example, Chief Commissioner Sitalsing had acknowledged that he had had a secret report drawn up about Schuiling. The chief had also said that months before the alleged masturbation report, he suspected that the gay mayor had sought “sexual gratification” late at night in a parking lot. Sitalsing said he did not believe Schuiling’s explanation that he was massaging away pain due to chronic medical complaints, which was wrongly mistaken for masturbation.
Before the case was brought to trial, the chief public prosecutor wrote that Schuiling was not only a sex offender, but also potentially blackmailable.
According to Koops, these prejudices determined the entire criminal process. He quoted from Schuiling’s police interrogation, in which officers repeatedly urged the mayor to admit that he had masturbated. Koops: “How suggestive and how inappropriate, because Schuiling had already said that he was impotent and had shown his medication.”
According to Koops, the chief commissioner’s prejudices were reinforced by the actions of chief public prosecutor Greive. He wrote to the king’s commissioner, even before the case was before the courts, that Schuiling was not only a sex offender, but also potentially blackmailable. These conclusions from the chief officer played an important role in the mayor’s early resignation.
According to lawyer Koops, for all these reasons the court must still dismiss the criminal case by declaring the Public Prosecution Service inadmissible. If that does not happen, he wants to use the witness interviews to demonstrate that Schuiling should be acquitted.
Medical confidentiality
As far as the Public Prosecution Service is concerned, only the truck driver is called as a witness. The Advocate General emphasized “that the Public Prosecution Service is aware of the fact that this case is painful for Mr Schuiling, with far-reaching consequences”. But according to the Advocate General, the chief commissioner and the chief officer had no influence on the criminal case, at most on the administrative handling. And that is not what the appeal is about. She rejected the lawyer’s accusation that the police and the Public Prosecution Service “deliberately violated the presumption of innocence”.
During the hearing on Wednesday, new facts emerged that raised questions. It turned out that there was a recording of the conversation with 112 in which the truck driver said that he had seen someone masturbating on the highway. That recording, or its elaboration, is not in the criminal file. Requesting that recording requires permission from the driver – the 112 call was accidentally forwarded to the ambulance control room instead of to the police control room, and is therefore covered by medical confidentiality. The driver refuses to give permission for his report to be released, the Advocate General explained: “The driver actually wants nothing more to do with the case.” It is unclear whether this medical confidentiality can and will be broken by the court.
This may become apparent on January 14, when the court will announce in an interim judgment who will be heard as witnesses.
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