GÄFGEN v. GERMANY JUDGMENT 13 and hectic situation. They did not have any previous convictions. Moreover, D. had taken responsibility for his acts by admitting and explaining them in a note for the police file on the same day. The proceedings had lasted a long time and had attracted immense media attention. The defendants had suffered prejudice in their professional career: D. had been transferred to the Hessian Ministry of the Interior, and E. had been prohibited from acting in the prosecution of criminal offences. Furthermore, it was the first time that a conflict situation such as the one in the defendants’ case had been assessed by a German criminal court. The court took into consideration as aggravating factors that D. had not acted spontaneously as he had already directed the use of force on the evening before he had given the order to E. Moreover, by their acts, the defendants had risked compromising the applicant’s conviction for murder. The court further found that the preservation of the legal order did not warrant the enforcement of the fines imposed. Through the defendants’ criminal conviction it had been made clear that an order by a State agent to use force to obtain information was illegal. 51. The judgment became final on 20 December 2004. 52. Subsequently, D. was appointed chief of the Police Headquarters for Technology, Logistics and Administration. 2. The official liability proceedings brought by the applicant 53. On 28 December 2005 the applicant applied to the Frankfurt am Main Regional Court for legal aid for bringing official liability proceedings against the Land of Hesse for the payment of compensation. He claimed that he had been traumatised and in need of psychological treatment because of the methods deployed during the police investigation. 54. In its submissions dated 27 March 2006 the Frankfurt am Main police headquarters contested that E.’s conduct when questioning the applicant in the morning of 1 October 2002 was to be legally classified as coercion and amounted to a breach of official duties. 55. On 28 August 2006 the Frankfurt am Main Regional Court dismissed the applicant’s application for legal aid and the applicant appealed. 56. On 28 February 2007 the Frankfurt am Main Court of Appeal dismissed the applicant’s appeal. Endorsing the reasons given by the Regional Court, it confirmed, in particular, that police officers D. and E., when threatening the applicant, had infringed human dignity, which was inviolable, and had thus breached their official duties. However, the applicant would face difficulties establishing causation between the threats of torture and alleged mental damage allegedly necessitating psychological treatment. The officers’ threat was negligible compared to the traumatisation caused by the fact of having killed a child. Moreover, even assuming that the applicant would be able to prove that detective officer E.