Confessed cannibal's case set to go to Germany's highest court

The case of a German man who admitted killing and eating an acquaintance he met over the Internet is set to go to the country's highest court, his attorney said Monday.

A professor of criminal law, Wolfgang Mitsch, has appealed the murder conviction of Armin Meiwes to the Federal Constitutional Court, said Meiwes' lawyer, Harald Ermel.

Ermel said Mitsch consulted with him before taking the move. It was not clear when the top court might consider the case.

Last month, Germany's Federal Court of Justice rejected as "clearly unfounded" Meiwes' appeal against his conviction and life sentence. Mitsch maintains that the sentence was disproportionate and violated the constitution.

Computer technician Meiwes was sentenced last May to life in prison after being retried and convicted for murdering Bernd Juergen Brandes in a case that both fascinated and appalled Germany.

Meiwes has said that Brandes traveled from Berlin in 2001 after answering his Internet posting under the pseudonym "Franky" seeking a young man for "slaughter and consumption."

He said Brandes wanted to be stabbed to death after drinking a bottle of cold medicine to lose consciousness. Meiwes captured the killing on video.

Police tracked down and arrested Meiwes in December 2002 after a student in Austria alerted them to a message Meiwes had posted on the Internet seeking a man willing to be killed and eaten, reports AP.

In early 2004, a court in the city of Kassel convicted Meiwes of manslaughter and sentenced him to 8 1/2 years in prison, but prosecutors appealed the verdict.

Federal judges overturned that ruling and ordered a retrial, arguing that the lower court, in rejecting murder charges, failed to give sufficient consideration to the sexual motive behind the killing.