district court of ravnkær

case no. 2026-r-0041

the state v. jens møller

opening statement — defense

defense counsel karen damgaard rises and addresses the court.

your honour, lay judges.

the prosecutor just told you a story. it was a good story. clear villain, clear motive, a neat ending. but a story is not evidence. and this court does not convict on stories.

so let me tell you what the evidence actually shows.

on the evening of 14 january, erik bredahl drove to his partner’s farm. he had been drinking at ravnkær kro before that — drinking enough to reach a blood alcohol content of 0.14. for reference, that is nearly three times the legal driving limit. at that level of intoxication, a person’s balance is severely impaired. their coordination is compromised. their judgment is, to put it plainly, gone.

erik arrived at møllergården around 20:30. he and jens talked in the kitchen. they talked about the business — which was struggling, yes. that is not disputed. friends and partners argue about money. it does not make one of them a murderer.

at some point, erik decided to walk to the silo. alone. in the dark. in january. to “check something,” he said. jens stayed in the kitchen. and erik climbed a steep ladder — severely intoxicated — to a narrow platform twelve meters above the ground. a platform with a broken safety railing.

that railing had been broken for four months. and here is something the prosecution did not emphasize: it was jens møller who reported the broken railing to the municipality. jens møller created the paper trail. jens møller tried to get it fixed. does that sound like a man planning to use that railing as a murder weapon?

the prosecutor spoke of a boot print. size 44, found on the platform. jens wears size 44. he also told you jens denied going up there that night. but consider: after hearing the fall, after finding his partner crumpled at the base of the silo — is it not possible, is it not human, that a man in a state of shock might climb up to see what happened? to understand? and then, in the chaos that followed, forget that he had done so?

the prosecutor spoke of bruises. bruises on erik’s forearms. he wants you to see hands. grip marks. but the forensic evidence will tell you a different story. the pathologist herself will tell you — under oath — that those bruises are consistent with the flailing motions of a fall. with a man reaching out, striking his arms against the railing, the ladder, the silo wall as he tumbled twelve meters to the ground.

the prosecutor spoke of a phone. erik’s phone in jens’s truck. he wants you to see a cover-up. but erik came to the farm in his own car — and then what? they spoke in the kitchen. perhaps erik set his phone down. perhaps it ended up in jens’s truck at some point during the evening. there are a dozen innocent explanations. the prosecution has chosen the darkest one.

and the prosecutor spoke of thirty minutes. the gap between the fall and the call to 112. thirty minutes. as though a man who has just found his friend broken and dying at the bottom of a silo should consult his watch and dial with steady hands. thirty minutes of shock. thirty minutes of trying to help. thirty minutes of a human being falling apart.

the prosecution has no witness to a murder. no dna. no blood. no weapon. no confession. what they have is a sad, terrible accident and a theory that requires you to ignore everything that doesn’t fit.

i ask you to look at the evidence — all of it, not just the pieces the prosecution has selected — and to remember that the burden is on them. not on jens møller to prove his innocence, but on them to prove his guilt. beyond reasonable doubt.

they cannot do it. because jens møller did not kill erik bredahl.

thank you.