“Every trial should be a battle for what is right.”

“Every trial should be a battle for what is right.” is the principle Richard Mattinger once gave Caspar Leinen, and the novel turns it into a question rather than a guarantee: what can a lawyer do when the rules of a trial are clear, but the law has already foreclosed accountability for the past? The phrase links Leinen’s commitment to fair procedure with his attempt to make the court confront the reason Fabrizio Collini’s complaint against Hans Meyer came to nothing.

Origin and Meaning

On the night before the trial, Leinen stays in his chambers until three-thirty, sorting witness statements, expert opinions, police reports, and forensic evidence in search of a detail that might explain the murder. Hans Meyer’s chessmen serve as paperweights among the files, and Leinen puts the white king in his pocket before leaving. Passing Mattinger’s chambers, he recalls the older lawyer’s principle: a trial should be a battle for what is right, as the law’s founders intended.

The thought is framed by the machinery of the hearing. Three professional judges, two lay judges, a prosecutor, an accessory prosecutor, and the defense lawyer will sit together under a code of criminal procedure containing hundreds of provisions. Leinen reflects that a judgment can be quashed for failure to observe even one of them. The rules are not incidental obstacles to justice in this account; their observance is what gives a trial its legitimacy. Yet the scene also leaves open whether procedural correctness can reach a just result when the law itself has closed off inquiry.

A Principle Under Procedural Pressure

At the beginning of the case, the court explains that Collini may express his view of the charge, request evidence, and consult a lawyer, and that his silence cannot be used against him. Collini says he does not want to speak. Leinen keeps watching his hands, while the right to remain silent establishes the immediate terms of the defense: participation cannot simply be demanded from the accused.

That boundary is tested when the presiding judge asks the lawyers to disclose any plans for a plea or statement. She stresses the unusual circumstances: the victim was eighty-five, Collini was sixty-seven, he had no previous convictions, and lengthy investigations had produced no motive. When she presses the lawyers to give the court advance notice, Leinen replies that Collini has chosen to say nothing at that time and asks whether she expects him to reveal more. His response makes the principle practical: defending the client includes protecting his procedural choice, even when the court wants an explanation.

Procedure Opens a Historical Question

During Dr Sybille Schwan’s testimony, Richard Mattinger establishes that Hans Meyer was never questioned, despite proceedings and an investigation by the Stuttgart Public Prosecutor’s Office. Schwan confirms that the proceedings were discontinued on 7 July 1969. Mattinger ends his questioning, and the courtroom is left with the impression that the case against Meyer has been resolved in his favor. Collini bows his head and weeps.

Leinen then challenges that impression. Schwan clarifies that the investigation ended for a different reason: the statute of limitations had come into force. She confirms that Collini had named the man responsible for his father’s shooting, filed a complaint, and presented evidence, but that a law effective on 1 October 1968 made the case time-barred. Leinen connects that legal change to Collini’s motive, arguing that the difference between an arbitrary killing and an understandable one matters to the question of guilt. The presiding judge allows the inquiry because it may affect that question.

The exchange makes the limits of the phrase visible. Leinen does not deny that Collini killed Meyer; instead, he asks the court to examine the legal history that prevented Meyer’s guilt or innocence from being investigated. Schwan explains that, in a constitutional state governed by the rule of law, an offense once made subject to a statute of limitations cannot later be made prosecutable again. The principle of procedural legality therefore cuts both ways: it gives the trial its rules, but it also protects the finality of a limitation rule whose consequence was that earlier crimes could no longer be pursued.

Justice Without a Simple Victory

After the testimony, the court adjourns to consider how the new evidence affects the schedule. Leinen remains seated with Collini in the slowly emptying courtroom; neither speaks for a while. Collini eventually tells him that he does not think they have won, recalling the Italian saying that the dead do not want revenge and only the living do. His response refuses to equate exposing the legal history with repairing its consequences.

The phrase also sits beside a smaller moment of recognition. Earlier, as Collini is being escorted away, he stops in the corridor, returns to the visitors’ room, and thanks Leinen, apologizing for the difficulty of the case. Their conversation has lasted less than fifteen minutes, and they do not shake hands. This gesture does not settle the case or erase the conflict between law and justice. It shows, instead, the human trust that can form inside a procedure whose fairness depends on respecting the accused—even when neither lawyer nor client can claim that the trial has made everything right.