Suspended jail for husband that killed wife in avalanche

brooksy wrote:

andyhull wrote:If she had a head injury and her mouth was full of snow I guess it's possible to argue either could have killed her. Not sure whether the defence were arguing that she died from the head injury or that she would have died from it however quickly she was found.

The info on here said her neck was broken, I don't class that as a head injury & wearing a helmet will not prevent your neck from breaking. I'm saying this as you seem to consider the wearing or not of a helmet as a contributing factor, which IMO is not relevant.

I missed the reference to the broken neck, I was going on the previous description of a head injury. Indeed the wearing or not of a helmet in this situation is not relevant.

The incident itself is tragic.

The fact that this guy was even charged is quite wrong though. A situation like that involves joint responsibility. There are many safety factors to consider, islands of safety, line of sight, tranciever operation, slope safety, skier seperation etc... Whilst it seems that they made some major errors of judgement, it is far too easy to judge in hindsight. Nobody gets all safety aspects perfect 100% of the time. Especialy when you are new to off piste skiing.

To say that he killed her is just wrong, making an awful tragedy more difficult for him to come to terms with, and doing nobody any good. Nobody's motivation for improving their off piste skiing safety is because they fear being prosecuted by the authorities if their partner is killed. Who would want to ski with somebody who thought like that? It is because they wish to minimise the chances of anything bad happening to either of them, surely?

It is an inhuman response to a personal tragedy in my view.

I think if they were saying that he killed her the verdict would have been quite different. Going off piste is a joint decision and responsibility, but starting on the slope before the partner clears it is not. as a skier I have very little influence on skiers above me and even that no-one forces me to go off-piste, if someone cuts the slope above they put my life in more danger than it would have been otherwise - regardless of the avy equipment I may or may not carry on me. I haven't heard of equipment or lack of it starting avalanches but I heard plenty about skiers doing it and unfortunately I heard of skiers doing it when there were other skiers below them. Ignoring the case and letting the man off completely just because he suffered a personal loss would send a wrong signal and promote irresposible behaviour. There was a case a few years back when a boarder caused an avalanche which caught the group below killing one person and his sentence was more severe - and the group below made their own decision to go off-piste, the only thing they had no influence over was this boarder above them. The difference between two cases is slight, and if in this case a man and the dead woman were not skiing together he would've got more than 3 months suspended sentence. There is a certain duty to care when skiing off-piste which was neglected in this case, and taking everythihng into consideration IMHO the response was very balanced and fair.

andymol2 wrote: And the public good of the prosecution was?

I don't know if its part of an Austrian public prosecutor's remit to take this into account but, the general public are not keen on rescuers being put at what they see as unnecessary risk and an increasing number want action taken against negligent mountaineers and skiers.

Tragic error of judgement on behalf of both of them but prosecuting won't have helped either of them or their families one jot.

There were several errors:
1. They didn't read the avalanche bulletin.
2. They weren't using their transceivers (his decision).
3. He set off before she had reached a point of safety.

Not familiar with Austrian law but surely this would have been dealt with more appropriately by their equivalent of an inquest.

AFAIK the UK and Ireland are the only countries in Europe that hold inquests. In other European countries the public prosecutors investigate suspicious deaths. They are required to investigate the incriminating and exculpating circumstances with equal care.

Prosecution might have been more appropriate if they had injured others skiing on piste beneath them.

I don't see what difference it makes.

John987 wrote: In Austria is the medical doctor the same as a pathologist, find it strange they medical field disagreeing in court

I found another article that gives some further information about the doctors roles and the official cause of death.

The doctor called by the prosecution was a "Sprengelarzt" (the literal translation is district doctor) they seem to have responsibilities similar to those of a medical officer in the UK, controlling epidemics etc. They are also responsible for the determination of cause of death and the issuing of death certificates. The actual determination is carried out by a "Totenbeschauarzt" literally a doctor who examines the dead, if they are uncertain about the cause of death they will request an autopsy. In this case an autopsy wasn't carried out. The doctors called by the defence were emergency doctors (probably the ones involved in the rescue) they might not have been qualified to determine cause of death, which might be why their opinion that a broken neck was the cause of death was rejected by both courts. So the official cause of death was recorded as asphyxiation. Asphyxiation is the cause of death in about 85% of avalanche fatalities.

According to Dr. Stefan Beulke a lawyer (he is also a mountain guide and ski instructor) who specialises in mountaineering and skiing accidents, the concept of collective responsibility is a theoretical ideal. In practice there is nearly always an actual or de facto leader. This guy admitted in court that it was his decision not to use their transceivers, he didn't say we discussed it and we decided they weren't necessary. This decision reduced his wife's chances of survival (if she did die of asphyxiation) to virtually nil, as far as I can see that was negligent. If they had been using their transceivers I doubt that he would have even been charged.

Its becoming increasingly clear that the mountains are no longer out of reach of the law, up until recently these accidents weren't thoroughly investigated, there simply wasn't enough manpower. The Austrians now have specially trained police whose primary function is to help with mountain rescues and carry out follow up investigations.