In brief

An appeal on points of law does not ask what happened, but whether the court did its job correctly. There are no new witnesses. To succeed, the error must be shown from the judgment or the record, within one month.

It lies against judgments of the regional courts, against appeal judgments, and as a leapfrog appeal against local court judgments (Sections 333 and 335 StPO). First-instance judgments of the regional courts go to the Federal Court of Justice, the rest to the higher regional court, for the Bonn district the Higher Regional Court of Cologne. It is filed within one week of pronouncement (Section 341 StPO), and grounds must be submitted within one month of service of the written reasons (Section 345(1) StPO). The grounds must be signed by a lawyer or declared on the record at the registry.

Substantive and procedural grounds

The substantive ground challenges the application of the law: gaps in the assessment of evidence, wrong legal classification, errors in sentencing. It is raised in a single sentence, and the appellate court then reviews the judgment comprehensively of its own motion.

A procedural ground challenges errors in the conduct of the trial: an application for evidence wrongly refused, a missing caution, an undisclosed discussion about an agreement, a statement used despite an exclusion rule. Here Section 344(2) sentence 2 StPO requires all facts showing the error to be set out completely and intelligibly on their own. A large share of procedural grounds fails at this hurdle, often because part of the file was not quoted verbatim.

Prospects and procedure

Most appeals on points of law are dismissed by order as obviously unfounded (Section 349(2) StPO). That says little about the individual case: appeals aimed at the right point regularly lead to partial reversals, for example of the sentence or of confiscation. Where the court sets the judgment aside, it usually refers the case to a different chamber. If only the defendant appealed, the new sentence may not be higher (Section 358(2) StPO).

In detail: appeals on points of law in criminal cases.

General explanation, not advice on an individual case. As of November 2026.