No verdict in swimming pool murder case after accidentally publishing verdict

The court did not rule in the Marum swimming pool murder case on Thursday afternoon. One of the verdicts was published by mistake in the morning. The lawyers of the four suspects saw this as biased by the court and submitted a request for recusal to remove these ‘partisan’ judges from the case.

According to the law, a request for disqualification must always be processed. Other judges then form the recusal chamber, which will decide on this. A recusal room was hastily put together on Thursday afternoon. However, the request was not processed.

The lawyers need more time to discuss the legal consequences of the premature publication with their clients and requested a postponement. In addition, they want all requests for recusal to be processed simultaneously.

The case revolves around the murder of Jan Elzinga in July 2012. The 40-year-old man was shot dead in front of the swimming pool gate. Since then, the case has been known as the ‘swimming pool murder’. The four suspects were sentenced to twenty years in prison by the court in Groningen in 2022. On appeal, prison sentences of up to twenty years were again demanded for instigating the murder. The four strongly deny having anything to do with the murder.

The suspects and their relatives reacted furiously about the court’s slip-up. “Nothing can ever go right in this case,” people grumbled in the hall. The victim’s relatives also had nothing good to say about this mistake. Everyone wants to know where they stand, the court’s counselors also realize. “I may be the oldest councilor, but I have never experienced this. This is horrible, we apologize for this,” said the chairman of the court.

The court does not accept the request for recusal, but is now forced to put down the hammer for a while until the recusal chamber has decided. It is not known when this will happen. The chamber agrees with the lawyers’ request for postponement.

“There are major interests at play. Everyone is surprised by what happened this morning,” said one of the judges of the recusal chamber. The trick now is to put the agendas together as quickly as possible. “Everyone benefits from knowing what the end result will be.”