The most detailed public account of the appeal theory comes from reporting on a lengthy filing and on a later 44-page ᴀssessment ᴀssociated with the federal prosecutor’s support for Revision. The claim is not that new witnesses have appeared or that Madeleine McCann’s body has been found. The claim is that the trial court mishandled the record it already had. Prosecutors say judges discarded witnesses too readily, treated the absence of DNA and fingerprints as if it ended the analysis, failed to evaluate circumstantial evidence in combination, and allowed the atmosphere created by McCann coverage to distort how testimony was used rather than how it should have been tested.

Bias on the part of the trial judge has been alleged in the papers. Those are allegations. The Braunschweig bench, for its part, said some witnesses were not reliable enough to ground a conviction and that identification based on eyes after years and after global publicity was not a subsтιтute for physical traces. The court lifted the arrest warrant in that case in July 2024, mid-trial, after concluding there was no longer urgent suspicion on the five counts, a signal many observers read as a preview of the October acquittal. German Revision is not a second chance to persuade a new jury with the same speeches. It is a legality check.

The Federal Court of Justice can hold that a trial court was enтιтled to doubt a witness even if prosecutors wished it had believed her. It can also hold that a court legally erred by isolating each strand of proof instead of asking what the strands did together. Federal-level support for the appeal, reported in February 2026, is politically and insтιтutionally significant inside the German system because the Attorney General’s office does not attach itself to every disappointed prosecution. It is still not a verdict. If Leipzig finds error, the practical next step discussed by prosecutors has been a new trial in a court that has not already lived through eight months of the same file — Göttingen has been named as the preferred destination.

If Leipzig finds no error that requires reversal, the 2024 acquittals become final and the only remaining criminal pressure on Brueckner from that bundle of charges disappears. Separate supervision from the 2019 rape conviction and from later minor matters is a different legal instrument. Conflating a critique of judicial method with a promise of incarceration is how an appeal brief becomes a tabloid certainty. The brief can be right and still fail. It can be overstated and still succeed on a narrower point. Until 11 January 2027, it is an argument.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/oct/14/secret-dna-test-confirmed-alleged-stalker-was-not-madeleine-mccann-says-officer