Treatment of partial acquittals and associated cost decisions in appellate revisions: removal from the operative part upon dismissal of the appeal

The German Federal Court of Justice (BGH), 6th Criminal Senate, dismissed the defendant's appeal against the sentence of the Hanover Regional Court of 28 September 2022 as unfounded, resulting in the defendant's defeat on the merits; however, the court ordered that the partial acquittal and the associated decision on costs and expenses be dropped from the record, and imposed the costs of the appeal and the necessary expenses of the auxiliary claimant in the appellate proceedings on the defendant. The dispute concerned a criminal trial where the defendant challenged the lower court's judgment, specifically implicating the procedural consequences of a partial acquittal. The decisive legal basis was the doctrine that when an appellate court upholds a conviction while dropping a partial acquittal, the acquittal portion and its corresponding cost decisions are rendered void *ab initio* and must be removed from the operative part of the judgment, while the final conviction stands.