Fritz Moen

Fritz Yngvar Moen (December 17, 1941 – March 28, 2005) was a Norwegian man wrongfully convicted for two distinct felony murders, serving a total of 18 years in prison. After the reversal of the conviction an official inquiry was instigated to establish what had gone wrong in the authorities' handling of the case, and on June 25, 2007 the commission delivered harsh criticism to both the police, the prosecution and the courts in what was immediately termed the largest miscarriage of justice in Norway of all time.

Moen was deaf, with a severe speech impediment. He was also partly paralyzed, but had normal intelligence and good memory.

He was convicted for two separate rapes and murders, both in Trondheim:

The prosecuting authorities relied on Moen's confession to the murders, a confession that appears to have been coerced by way of intimidation.

Biological samples were collected at both crime scenes and tested with available technology at the time but the samples were then lost and destroyed for reasons that remain unclear.

When Moen was convicted, his defense lawyer, Olav Hestenes announced: "For the first time at this desk, I allow myself to say that a travesty of justice has been committed."

The judge, Karl Solberg, reacted furiously and later applauded the court's verdict. Solberg has become notorious in actions of miscarriage of justice, being instrumental in the wrongful incarcerations of Moen and Atle Hage, a father who was convicted of incest, took his own life after release, and was cleared ten years later when his children testified on his behalf.

Moen's attorney requested a new trial for both cases on January 2, 2000. The court accepted the requests for the Sigrid Heggheim case, and on October 7, 2004 judge Wenche Skjæggestad announced that the court reversed the conviction and acquitted Moen for the attempted rape and murder of Sigrid Heggheim. The court found that the forensic evidence was exonerative of Moen, and that in any case reasonable doubt should have acquitted him in the first place. Among other things, he had an alibi for the most likely time of the crime. Also, the forensic evidence indicated that the perpetrator had pursued the victim across a field, knocked her down, and then tied her with her own clothes - Moen was partly paralyzed and physically incapable of these actions.

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