The lay judge is a relative of a person who is part of the same network as the acquitted men and has worked as a security guard at a nightclub that, according to the Chancellor of Justice, is often visited by individuals from the criminal network that the acquitted men are part of.
When we have these criminal networks, it appears unsuitable to combine a mission as a security guard with being a lay judge, says My Hedström, head of department at the Chancellor of Justice, to SVT.
The Chancellor of Justice believes that it is possible to question whether the security guard and the lay judge are independent in relation to the members of the network.
In the Court of Appeal's statement to the Supreme Court, the lay judge admits to a distant family relationship with a person in the network, whom he claims he has not had contact with for 20 years. He denies having met the acquitted men through his work as a security guard.
The trial concerned the murder in 2020 of a 20-year-old man in the Ragnvalla district of Helsingborg. In the district court, three of the four defendants were sentenced to life imprisonment and the fourth to 11 years and nine months in prison.
Corrected: In an earlier version, it was incorrectly stated that the lay judge is a relative of one of the acquitted men.
