A German engineer was killed on Friday in a case that shocked the country even though he spent 15 years in prison for murder, a German court ruled Friday.
The Frankfurt Regional High Court approved a lower court decision to dismiss Armin Mayves from a life sentence to a suspended sentence.
In a novel that spooked Germany's horror, Maevis found his victim Bernd-Juergen Brandes online. Brandes, a director of media technology, had published a declaration asking someone to "end his life without a trace."
Brandes traveled by train to meet Mayves in the western German town of Rothenburg in March 2001. There, he photographed himself cutting Brandes' rod with a knife before the men tried to eat it.
Brandes lost consciousness after bleeding heavily. Mayves put Brandes on a seat and kissed him before he threw a knife into his neck.
He then hung the victim on the hook and froze 30 kilograms of meat in bags and then ate some of them with cabbage and potatoes.
A German court initially convicted Mavis of manslaughter and sentenced him to eight years in prison in 2004.
But a court in Frankfurt canceled the sentence in 2006 and dismissed the defense argument that Maevis had done so at the victim's request, a crime similar to euthanasia, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in Germany.
The Frankfurt court said Mayves was mentally ill but was fully aware of what he was doing.
