Narcotics sentencing: irrelevance of alleged error in the sequence of penalty framework review

The Federal Court of Justice (BGH) 5th Criminal Senate rejected the defendant's appeal as unfounded, thereby upholding the Hamburg Regional Court's conviction and sentence from July 13, 2022, and ordering the defendant to bear the costs of the legal remedy. The dispute concerned a challenge to the penalty assessment in a narcotics case, specifically alleging an error in the procedural sequence of sentencing review (Prüfungsreihenfolge) during the determination of the statutory sentencing range. The Court ruled that the alleged violation of the required sequential check for mitigating or aggravating factors did not affect the outcome, as the specific nature of the offense and the quantities of active ingredients involved conclusively excluded any possibility that the sentence would have differed had the correct order been observed.