Impact of individual sentencing errors on aggregate penalty calculation in multi-offense proceedings

The Federal Court of Justice (6th Criminal Senate) dismissed the defendant’s appeal as unfounded, upholding the lower court’s conviction and sentencing while imposing the costs of the proceedings on the appellant. The dispute concerned a sentencing error in a multi-offense case where the regional court incorrectly applied legally effective one-year imprisonment terms to four specific counts, rather than the correct statutory maximum of nine months for those offenses, despite the defendant having received 30 additional separate sentences. Although the appellate panel acknowledged the sentencing chamber’s legal error regarding the duration of the four specific custodial sentences, it concluded that the mistake did not impact the final aggregate punishment, as the inclusion of the 30 other substantial sentences would have resulted in the same total combined penalty even under the correct lower individual maxima.