Facts
The appellant was sentenced by the Cantonal Court of Graubünden in 1981 to 10 years of penitentiary for offenses related to explosives and property. After his escape from prison, he was arrested in Italy in 1991 and sentenced in 1993 to 12 years of imprisonment for offenses related to explosives as well as completed and attempted bodily harm. After serving this sentence, he was extradited to Switzerland in 2002. On June 4, 2004, the lower court additionally sentenced him to 17 years of penitentiary as an additional sentence to the Italian judgment for the murder of a border guard in 1989.Considerations
The lower court assumed in determining the sentence that if all offenses had been known, a life sentence would have been appropriate. It set the additional sentence at 17 years of penitentiary, as it was of the opinion that the court would have been completely free in imposing the additional sentence in the case of a life sentence.
The Federal Supreme Court, however, sees this differently. An increase in the sentence to life imprisonment is only possible if the offender has committed multiple offenses punishable by this maximum sentence. Since in the present case only the murder was punishable by life imprisonment, an increase in the sentence to life imprisonment violates the principle of aspiration.
Furthermore, the additional sentence must not simply correspond to the difference between the hypothetical…