Fritz Moen
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Fritz Yngvar Moen, born December 17, 1941 - died March 28, 2005, was a Norwegian wrongfully convicted for two distinct felony murders, serving a total of 18 years in prison.
Moen was deaf with a severe speech impediment. He was also partly paralyzed, but had normal intelligence and good memory.
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[edit] Initial conviction and sentencing
He was convicted for two separate rapes and murders, both in Trondheim:
- Sigrid Heggheim, who was found attempted raped and strangled in September of 1976. Moen was indicted by Frostating court for the crime on April 11, 1978 and convicted and sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment on May 29 the same year. This sentence was reduced to 16 years on appeal.
- Torunn Finstad, who was reported missing on October 4, 1977 and was found dead on October 7, 1977, after having been raped and strangled. The same court indicted Moen for this crime on September 15, 1981, and on December 18th convicted and sentenced him to an additional 5 years. An appeal was rejected.
The prosecuting authorities relied on Moen's confession to the murders, a confession that appears to have been coerced by way of intimidation.
Biological samples were collected at both crime scenes and tested with available technology at the time; but the samples were since lost and destroyed for reasons that remain unclear.
[edit] Reversal
Moen's attorney requested a new trial for both cases on January 2, 2000. The court accepted the requests for the Sigrid case, and on October 7, 2004 reversed the conviction and acquitted Moen for the attempted rape and murder of Sigrid Heggheim. The court found that the forensic evidence was exonerative of Moen, and that in any case reasonable doubt should have acquitted him in the first place. Among other things, he had an alibi for the most likely time of the crime. Also, the forensic evidence indicated that the perpetrator had pursued the victim across a field, knocked her down, and then tied her with her own clothes - Moen was partly paralyzed and physically incapable of these actions.
The court rejected the appeal for a resumption of the Torunn Finstad case, and on October 13, 2005, the Norwegian Criminal Cases Review Board received a preliminary application for review of the case. When Moen died on March 28, 2005 of natural causes, it became known that he wanted the case on his behalf to continue.
In December of 2005, it became known that another person, one Tor Hepsø, had made a deathbed confession that he had killed both Sigrid Heggheim and Torunn Finstad. On June 15, 2006, the Criminal Cases Review Board formally accepted the application, and on August 24, 2006, Frostating court acquitted posthumously Fritz Moen also for the rape and murder of Sigrid Heggheim. It was found that the preponderance of the evidence made Hepsø a more likely suspect, and that Moen's confession was likely coerced and only included information that had been made public.
These two acquittals are widely attributed to the tireless work of his defense attorney John Christian Elden and private investigator Tore Sandberg.
There is now an expectation that Fritz Moen's estate will file a civil suit against the Norwegian government for several tens of millions of Norwegian kroner.
The case has attracted widespread public opinion in Norway. There are calls for a formal inquiry into the conduct of the prosecutors and police, and there is even talk of erecting a bust or statue of Moen in front of the Norwegian Ministry of Justice as a symbol of the responsibilities of the criminal justice system.
[edit] Inquiry
On September 8, 2006 the Norwegian cabinet named a commission headed by Henry John Mæland, professor of law at the University of Bergen with judge Inger Marie Dons Jensen and psychiatrist Ingrid Lycke Ellingsen to "find out why Moen was wrongfully convicted and evaluate whether changes are needed in the criminal justice system to avoid wrongful convictions in the future."
