Facts
In 2014, the Public Prosecutor's Office of the Canton of Basel-Stadt opened a criminal investigation against [A.] for commercial fraud and multiple forgery of documents to the detriment of [D. AG] . [A.] was subsequently sentenced by the Criminal Court of Basel-Stadt to a custodial sentence of 2 ½ years and a fine. Following the first-instance judgment, [A.] appointed lawyer Dr. [B.] as his private defense counsel. However, upon [A.] 's request, Dr. [B.] was shortly thereafter appointed as the court-appointed defense counsel.
Subsequently, [A.] was additionally convicted in a separate proceeding for another set of offenses. Against this judgment, Dr. [B.] as the court-appointed defense counsel filed an appeal, which was dismissed by the Court of Appeal of the Canton of Basel-Stadt.
Since June 2017, [A.] has been of unknown whereabouts, which is why Dr. [B.] could not submit an updated power of attorney for the federal appeal proceedings. The Federal Court therefore did not enter into the appeal, as the required procedural requirement of authorization to represent was not fulfilled.
Considerations
The Federal Court states that according to Art. 40 of the Federal Supreme Court Act (BGG), parties before the Federal Court can only be represented by lawyers who must provide a power of attorney. If such a power of attorney is missing, a deadline is set to remedy the deficiency, otherwise the legal document remains unnoticed.
In the present…