Abuse of protected persons and legal characterization of legally unitary acts (Tateinheit) in criminal revision

The BGH 6th Criminal Senate rejected the defendant's revision as unjustified with the specific modification that she was convicted of two legally unitary acts of abuse of protected persons, thereby upholding the Landgericht Verden's judgment of December 12, 2022, and ordering the defendant to bear the costs of the appeal. The dispute concerned a criminal appeal against a conviction for the abuse of a protected person, where the appellate court corrected the lower court's legal characterization of the offenses to accurately reflect the statutory unitary offense structure. The decisive legal basis was the doctrine of legal unitary acts (Tateinheit) applied to the crime of abuse of protected persons, which required the appellate court to adjust the verdict to align the conviction with the correct count of offenses despite the overall rejection of the appeal.