Löfvens designation of the killer a human reaction – Swedish Dagbladet

Prime Minister Stefan Löfven visited Olof Palme’s grave on Sunday, 30 years after the murder. Photo: Jonas Ekströmer / TT

D et 30 years since Olof Palme was murdered. Those of us who are old enough to remember the night will never forget it. Radio broadcast an hour after the murder. Phone Chains and WAKEFUL NIGHT. The day after Sweden was a nation in shock.

The assassination of the prime minister were also the beginning of an important event in the Swedish legal history. One explanation for this is that no one convicted of murder. Or, a person sentenced in itself for the murder: Christer Pettersson. Stockholm District Court found in July 1989 that Pettersson was guilty and sentenced him to life imprisonment. But this judgment was amended. Later that year, Pettersson was acquitted by the Court of Appeal. The Court of Appeal judgment was unlike the district court’s unanimous.

I just wrote is true. But this is an inappropriate way to describe what happened? After the Court of Appeal judgment Pettersson the law innocent of the murder. The judgment is final. Reality description is legally meaningful fixed. Is it inappropriate to talk at all about the previous conviction? And it is wrong to have a different opinion in a debt issue than an acquittal? Or to express it?

the core of the criticism is that the person acquitted in a court of law shall also be presumed innocent.

Prime Minister Stefan Löfven said in connection with the Olof Palme was honored at his death the following: “Lisbet Palme says firmly that she believes that it was Christer Pettersson and then I think about it.” For this, the leaves have been criticized. The representatives of the other parties is critical is not so surprising. But others, like the Bar Association Secretary General Anne Ramberg, believes that the statement is inappropriate. The core of the criticism is that the person acquitted in a court of law shall also be presumed innocent.

An acquittal is thus assumed to place restrictions not only on how the law should treat the former defendants. The judgment also sets limits on how people – or perhaps primarily ministers and, I suppose, other representatives of the public Sweden – can speak about the incident.

There are legal restrictions on how to speculate on debt issues concerning crime. To single out someone who may be criminal defamation and to identify a deceased person may be criminal defamation of the deceased. This applies even when spoken of been prosecuted for the offense and acquitted. (It may even be defamatory to point to a guilty person a criminal, for example by spreading an old conviction.)

A designation can not result in liability for defamation if it was, as it is expressed as a rule, justifiable. In this case it is more or less obvious that Löfvéns statement could not lead penalty of defamation. Assassination is a national trauma. It was then-prime minister who was killed. It has no legal conclusion. Moreover, when data from Christer Pettersson itself much later, where he took the blame (even if these data can be difficult to interpret).

For my part, I think it is a good general principle that at least in public discourse presume that freed man also is innocent.

These and other factors indicates that the possibility of getting speak freely must be very ambitious in this case. Slander responsibility is correspondingly limited.

But morally, then? For my part, I think it is a good general principle that at least in public discourse presume that freed man also is innocent. It is a prerequisite for those who have been acquitted of an accusation get a chance to get back into society – and not just in theory but also in practice.

While it is not possible to set up a principle of this kind without exception. Such a principle would hamper talks about important historical events and risk making the public conversation artificially.

The murder of Olof Palme is a unique event in Swedish history. It must be discussed openly, even by those in power and public figures. I can not see anything reprehensible in that the prime minister in an emotional situation, expressing his personal opinion, when this addition is linked to a review of a person as he seems to know personally (Lisbet Palme), in this way. It is a human reaction. Government leaders must also, to some extent, be able to express human reactions.