Add German jurisprudence to the list of things that confuse me

Remember the German guy who killed another German guy in the course of trying to eat him? Well, he's back in court:

"I wanted to eat him, but I didn't want to kill him," Armin Meiwes, 44, told judges in three hours of testimony at his retrial.

Uh, okay...it looks like someone's parents never explained how we get meat.

On the other hand, he may have only wanted to eat part of his victim. I think you know where this is going...

He had admitted killing Berlin-based computer specialist Bernd-Juergen Brandes, 43, but was spared a murder conviction and a possible life sentence because the victim had demanded to be eaten.

Meiwes told the court, repeating much of his testimony from his first trial, that he had severed Brandes's penis at his request and that both had tried to eat it, without success.

The article doesn't say whether or not Meiwes tried to cook the, uh, meat, but I suppose that could have made a difference.

Anyway, there seem to be a lot of strange legal issues at work in this case. The defendant is back on trial because a higher court decided that the original trial court had given him a sentence that was too lenient, but his legal team has argued that he's only guilty of the crime of "killing on request," which is apparently considered a form of "illegal euthanasia," and carries a lesser sentence than murder.

Meanwhile, as if this wasn't already bad enough, the original trial court apparently "ignored the fact that Meiwes had filmed the slaying for later sexual gratification." Perhaps I'm a bit naive, but that kind of sounds like an important detail, if you asked me. Oh, and, EWWWWW!

And then, there's this:

Psychiatrists have found Meiwes deeply disturbed but sane.

I don't have any of your fancy shrink degrees, but I'm pretty sure that a guy who cuts off somebody else's naughty bits with the express idea of sharing them as a meal, and then tells the court that he decided to pray when his victim began losing blood, but didn't know whether to "pray to the devil or to God," probably shouldn't get the little hand stamp that says "Sane."