By William J. Kole
The Associated Press
VIENNA, Austria — Police say Josef Fritzl left a lot of human wreckage in his wake: the daughter he imprisoned and raped for 24 years, the seven children he fathered with her and the wife whose life he shattered.
Yet, for an atrocity that has stunned the world, he may wind up serving just 15 years in prison if charged, tried and convicted.
Practically speaking, that may translate into a life sentence for Fritzl, 73. But his case has revived a debate over Europe’s lenient penal system - and whether harsher, U.S.-style sentencing guidelines might help deter such heinous crimes.
“Fifteen years for destroying human lives is unacceptable,” said Harald Vilimsky, a public safety policy official with Austria’s conservative Freedom Party. “Any punishment that falls a single day short of a life sentence is a mockery of the victims.”
Many Europeans abhor the death penalty, and capital punishment is illegal across the 27-nation EU. But in many countries, even convicted murderers handed life sentences seldom serve more than 25 years.
Sweden has life imprisonment for murder, but the sentencing guidelines go as low as 10 years. That applies - in theory at least - even to serial killers.
In Germany, convicted rapists are punished with sentences of six months to five years. Serial cases, and those involving weapons or death threats, can fetch up to 10 years in prison - but also as little as one year.
Poland’s maximum for rape is 15 years, and that would apply even for sexual assaults repeatedly carried out over two dozen years as alleged in the Austrian case. The standard time served? Two to 12 years.
“It’s rare that anyone serves the full sentence in Europe,” said James Whitman, a professor of comparative and foreign law at Yale. “It’s expected that people are let out early.”
In the United States, by contrast, first-degree rape is punishable by up to life imprisonment .
Experts say Europe’s shorter sentences - and its reluctance to jail people for offenses considered minor, such as possessing small amounts of marijuana - help explain why its prisons are far less crowded than U.S. lockups.
The United States has the most prisoners per capita in the world, with 751 for every 100,000 people, according to the London-based International Center for Prison Studies. Most European nations trail far behind: Britain’s rate is 151 per 100,000, Austria’s is 108 and Denmark’s is 66.
Fritzl surely would face a tougher prison term anywhere in the United States, and in some states maybe even the death penalty, said Dan Richman, a law professor at Columbia University.
In Austria, prosecutors are still considering how to charge Fritzl, who police say confessed to imprisoning his daughter Elisabeth - now 42 - in a warren of windowless, soundproofed rooms beneath his home when she was 18 and raping her repeatedly.
They say Fritzl also admitted to incinerating the body of one of the seven children he fathered after the child died in infancy.
Authorities say Fritzl could face up to 15 years if convicted of rape. Prosecutors are looking into whether the retired electrician could be tried for “murder through failure to act” in the infant’s death.
Austria’s criminal code prescribes prison terms from 10 to 20 years to life for murder - but in Austrian terms, a life sentence is interpreted as 20 to 25 years of confinement.
Fritzl has not yet been charged, but the most likely charges he faces are rape, incest and false imprisonment. If convicted of all three, he would serve the sentences concurrently and the maximum would be 15 years based on the rapes.
more tragedy in Josef Fritzl’s wake?
Police are looking into possible links between a young woman’s killing and Josef Fritzl, above, the man who confessed to holding his daughter captive for 24 years and fathering her seven children, a senior law enforcement official said Wednesday.
Alois Lissl, the chief of police of Upper Austria province, said that although no evidence had surfaced so far, police have widened their investigation into the unsolved murder 22 years ago to include the incest suspect.
The bound body of 17-year-old Martina Posch was found on a shore of the Upper Austrian lake of Mondsee in 1986. Josef Fritzl’s wife owned part of an inn and camping ground on the other side of the lake at that time.