Facts
The appellant [X.] was convicted by the High Court of the Canton of Zurich for assistance (Art. 305 para. 1 SCC) and sentenced to a conditional fine of 120 daily rates of CHF 60.--. The appellant was a passenger in a car that collided with a cyclist in Wetzikon on June 7, 2013. After the collision, the appellant left the scene of the accident without leaving her contact details and drove the car away, while the unknown driver took a seat on the passenger side.
The public prosecutor accused the appellant of shielding the unknown driver from prosecution by protecting him from police investigations and thus from prosecution. The appellant argued that the indictment was incomplete, unclear, and insufficient, and that she had not known that the unknown driver had committed any relevant criminal offense.
Considerations
The Federal Court dismissed the appeal and confirmed the conviction for assistance. The court found that the indictment sufficiently described the suspicion of the appellant's behavior in light of the relevant circumstances and that the appellant had accepted a prevention or at least a temporary delay of the prosecution of the unknown driver by her actions.
The court stated that the accusation was not directed against the unknown driver, but against the appellant, and that the appellant was not responsible for the driver's behavior, but for her own. The court also found that the lower court had rightly affirmed the subjective elements of assistance, as the appellant had acted with direct intent.
The court also rejected the appellant's argument that it was up to the state to prove positively that the…