Hundreds of serious crime convicts handed shorter sentences because trials take too long

Hundreds of perpetrators of serious crimes, including murder, rape, and child sex abuse, have received sentence reductions because their trials took too long. The sentence reductions range from several months to three years, RTL Nieuws discovered after analyzing 156,000 court rulings on cases involving murder, manslaughter, rape, sexual assault, and sexual exploitation.

Perpetrators in criminal cases are entitled to a ruling within a reasonable timeframe, usually around two years. But in practice, cases regularly take too long. To compensate, judges impose lower sentences on the perpetrators.

RTL found 669 cases with reduced sentences due to trials taking too long since 2008. They include a father who raped his daughter (2-month reduction), a teacher who raped a child during a school camp (2-month reduction), and an attempted murderer (3-year reduction). The number has been increasing sharply, especially in recent years. By mid-year this year, courts have already granted more sentence reductions than in all of 2022.

Many victims and surviving loved ones are outraged by these sentence reductions. Wesley van Gerwen, whose 14-month-old daughter was murdered by his ex’s new boyfriend, told RTL that he had a “short circuit” when perpetrator Maick S.’s sentence was reduced on appeal. S. severely abused little Xaja. She had broken bones and amphetamine in her blood when she died.

The court initially sentenced S. to 22 years in prison. On appeal, that sentence was reduced by eight years. Because the appeal took so long, the court deducted another two years from the sentence, leaving 12 years behind bars. The appeal was partly delayed by the coronavirus pandemic.

Van Gerwen called it “unfair” that the perpetrator was compensated for the delayed process, but not the victims or surviving loved ones. “I actually understand very little of it. We were also stuck inside during the coronavirus period. We all had to wait two years longer.”

27-year-old Anne from Groningen was sexually abused by her kickboxing coach, Hans T., for three years when she was a teenager. It took four years for T. to be convicted. The court gave him a 10-month reduction in his sentence, resulting in him spending only a year in prison.

“At first, I was incredibly relieved that there was finally a verdict,” Anne said. “But I soon realized that I found it very unfair, because I had to wait just as long in this criminal trial as he did. It felt as if he were the victim of the entire criminal justice system instead of a perpetrator in a sexual assault case. I found that very painful.”

The Court of Audit is very critical of how long the legal process is taking. Since 2012, the Court of Audit has written 39 reports on the stalled criminal justice chain. “Successive Ministers have said that things must improve. They have also formulated concrete goals for this, but those goals are not being met,” Erwout Irrang of the Court of Audit told RTL. “We see that since 2019, the turnaround time has not been met in a single year.”

According to the Court of Audit, there are several reasons for delays in criminal trials, including increasing investigative possibilities that take more time. Psychological assessments can also take a long time. But the Court of Audit considers poor cooperation between the police, the Public Prosecution Service (OM), and the courts as the main problem. “If, for example, the police and OM handle more cases involving sexual offenses, but the courts do not take this sufficiently into account, a kind of blockage can occur in the system,” Irrang said.

Minister David van Weel of Justice and Security acknowledged that victims are further harmed by long-running criminal cases. He would not comment on RTL Nieuws’s findings directly, but in general said: “Yes, the chain is clogged. Things need to change drastically.” He is working on a plan to do that and hopes to present it next year.

Asked why improvements are taking so long, Van Weel said: “There is no unwillingness on my part. We all want to solve this. If it had been easy, we would have solved this years ago. So, it is apparently a difficult problem. Therefore, you have to look closely at the knobs to use to finally achieve that breakthrough.”