A judge today rejected a request to jail the man convicted of stabbing tennis star Monica Seles.
Guenter Parche was given a suspended sentence in October 1993 after being found guilty of causing grievous bodily injury in the attack six months earlier. Seles, 21, has not played professional tennis since the stabbing.Prosecutors and Seles' attorney had asked Judge Gertraut Goering to change the charge against Parche to attempted manslaughter and sentence him to prison.
Seles, who lives in Sarasota, Fla., issued a one-sentence statement through IMG, her management firm.
"I am as surprised as everyone else, and I just don't understand this," she said.
On April 30, 1993, Parche stabbed Seles in the back during a changeover in a match at a tournament in Hamburg's Rothenbaum stadium. Parche said he knifed Seles so that his idol, Germany's Steffi Graf, could again become No. 1 in the world.
Goering said testimony from Seles would have been needed to convict Parche on a more serious charge. Seles did not attend the original trial or the appeal hearing.
"We assume that Parche's act is the reason that Seles is not able to play tennis anymore, but this can't be said with certainty because Miss Seles was not willing to testify in court," Goering said.
Seles wrote a letter to the court, saying Parche's attack had "destroyed my life."
Goering accepted testimony by police officers and psychiatrists who said that, aside from his fixation on Graf, Parche was harmless.
Prosecutor Rolf Rosenkranz had acknowledged in his closing arguments, "from the previous life of the accused, there is nothing to show that he was aggressive."
But Rosenkranz said the 40-year-old Parche should be imprisoned because he had carefully planned the attack, because it was carried out in public, and was in part based on political prejudices.
Parche had spoken of his dislike of Serbs. Seles, an ethnic Hungarian, was born in the Serbian area of Yugoslavia. She is now an American citizen.
Seles' psychologist, Jerry Russel May, of Reno, Nev., testified that she was suffering post-traumatic stress disorder. She has trouble doing normal, public daily tasks, such as going to the grocery store, May testified.
But homicide detective Rolf Bauer, who headed the interrogation of Parche after the attack, testified that Parche had given a credible explanation that he didn't want to maim Seles for life, only put her out of action until Graf could regain the top spot in women's tennis.
"It was obvious to us all that the man belonged with a doctor and not in jail," Bauer said.