DOCUMENTATION:
The Duggan Case
[PDF version of the article which includes this short piece]
Jeremiah Duggan committed suicide by throwing himself in front of three cars on Federal Highway 455 near Wiesbaden, Germany, in March 2003, dying on the third attempt. According to the Wiesbaden police report and a statement to the BBC in February 2004 by Wiesbaden prosecutor Dr. Dieter Arlet, Duggan died as a consequence of his own behavior and with no one else involved. "We are 100% certain that it was a suicide."
Duggan's mother, Erica Duggan, appealed the prosecutor's decision to close the investigation in the German court system. In 2006, the Regional Appeals Court Frankfurt am Main rejected her application, finding it without merit; and on Feb. 4, 2010, the Federal Constitutional Court, Germany's highest court, sustained the original police finding.
In April 2007, Hartmut Ferse of the public prosecutor's office in Wiesbaden showed a reporter for the Wiesbadener Kurier ten thick folders of documents related to the case, telling him that no other suicide had caused so much work for his office. He suggested that contrary theories had developed because Erica Duggan could not accept that her son committed suicide. The newspaper referred to the various theories put forth by the Duggans and their British government supporters as myths, which gained adherents without any evidence.
In its decision, the Constitutional Court stated: "There are no indications that the son of the appellant was not killed by the accident on Federal Highway 455 which he caused himself." Noting the counter-argument by Erica Duggan that Duggan was killed by an unknown party at another location and then, to cover up the crime, was taken to the scene of his death, the Court said, "The correctness of such an assumption implies and presupposes that several drivers (who saw Duggan in the road or who Duggan attempted to throw himself at and who gave statements to the police) who were out and about at various times, would have colluded and at least would have participated in the construction of the accident event found by the police and the expert." The Court portrayed this assumption as absurd and completely unsubstantiated.
[For further coverage of the Duggan Case, see "The Facts of the Duggan Case."]
