Judges' Trial

Judges' Trial

The Judges' Trial (or the Justice Trial, or, officially, "The United States of America vs. Josef Altstötter, et al.") was the third of the twelve trials for war crimes the U.S. authorities held in their occupation zone in Germany in Nuremberg after the end of World War II. These twelve trials were all held before U.S. military courts, not before the International Military Tribunal, but took place in the same rooms at the Palace of Justice. The twelve U.S. trials are collectively known as the "Subsequent Nuremberg Trials" or, more formally, as the "Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals" (NMT).

The defendants in this case were 16 German jurists and lawyers. Nine had been officials of the Reich Ministry of Justice, the others were prosecutors and judges of the Special Courts and People's Courts of Nazi Germany. They were—amongst other charges—held responsible for implementing and furthering the Nazi "racial purity" program through the eugenic and racial laws.

The judges in this case, heard before Military Tribunal III, were Carrington T. Marshall (presiding judge), former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Ohio, James T. Brand from Oregon, Mallory B. Blair from Texas, and Justin Woodward Harding as an alternate judge. Marshall had to retire due to illness on June 19, 1947, at which point Brand became president and Harding a full member of the tribunal. The Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution was Telford Taylor; his deputy was Charles M. LaFollette. The indictment was presented on January 4, 1947; the trial lasted from March 5 to December 4, 1947. Ten of the defendants were found guilty; four received sentences for lifetime imprisonment, the rest prison sentences of varying lengths. Four persons were acquitted of all charges.

Indictment

# Participating in a common plan or conspiracy to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity;
# War crimes through the abuse of the judicial and penal process, resulting in mass murder, torture, plunder of private property.
# Crimes against humanity on the same grounds, including slave labor charges.
# Membership in a criminal organization, the SS or the NSDAP leadership corps.

Count 4 applied only to Altstötter, Cuhorst, Engert, Joel (with respect to the SS) and to Cuhorst, Oeschy, Nebelung, and Rothaug concerning the NSDAP leadership. Both organizations had been found criminal previously by the IMT.

Count 1 was dropped: the court declared the charge to be outside its jurisdiction. Judge Blair filed a dissenting opinion that stated that the court should have made a statement that the Military Tribunals of the NMT in fact "did" have jurisdiction over charges of "conspiracy to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity".

All defendants pleaded "not guilty".

Defendants

The highest-ranking officials of the Nazi judicial system could not be tried: Otto Georg Thierack, Minister of Justice since 1942, had committed suicide in 1946, and Roland Freisler, the President of the People's Court since 1942, was killed in a 1945 bombing raid on Berlin.

All convicts were found guilty on all charges brought before them, except Rothaug, who was found guilty only on count 3 of the indictment, while he was found not guilty on counts 2 and 4. However, the court commented in its judgment that

"By his manner and methods he made his court an instrumentality of terror and won the fear and hatred of the population. From the evidence of his closest associates as well as his victims, we find that Oswald Rothaug represented in Germany the personification of the secret Nazi intrigue and cruelty. He was and is a sadistic and evil man. Under any civilized judicial system he could have been impeached and removed from office or convicted of malfeasance in office on account of the scheming malevolence with which he administered injustice." [http://www.mazal.org/archive/nmt/03/NMT03-T1156.htm Mazal] .]

The public considered the sentences generally too low. Most of the convicts were released already in the early 1950s; some (Lautz, Rothenberger, Schlegelberger) even received retirement pensions in West Germany. The guide to German law entitled "Das Recht der Gegenwart" is still being published under the name Franz Schlegelberger (ISBN 3-8006-2260-2).

The Judges' Trial was the inspiration for the 1961 movie "Judgment at Nuremberg", starring Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Marlene Dietrich, Maximilian Schell, Judy Garland, Montgomery Clift, Werner Klemperer and William Shatner.

Notes

References

* [http://www.mazal.org/archive/nmt/03/NMT03-C001.htm Trial proceedings] from the Mazal Library.
* [http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10007073 Description of the trial] from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
* [http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/nuremberg/Alstoetter.htm The Justice Trial]


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Нужна курсовая?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Trial movies — is a film genre, also commonly referred to as courtroom drama. [ [http://www.afi.com/10top10/crdrama.html American Film Institute, Court Room drama top ten.] ] The American Bar Association s listIn 1989, the American Bar Association rated the… …   Wikipedia

  • Trial of Geert Wilders — A trial of Dutch politician Geert Wilders took place in the Netherlands in 2010–2011. Wilders was accused of criminally insulting religious and ethnic groups and inciting hatred and discrimination. He was found not guilty in June 2011.[1] Wilders …   Wikipedia

  • Judges of the International Criminal Court — The eighteen judges of the International Criminal Court (ICC) are elected for nine year terms by the member countries of the Court. Candidates must be nationals of those countries and they must possess the qualifications required in their… …   Wikipedia

  • Trial of Saddam Hussein — Saddam Hussein sits before an Iraqi judge at a courthouse in Baghdad, 1 July 2004. The Trial of Saddam Hussein was the trial of the deposed President of Iraq Saddam Hussein by the Iraqi Interim Government for crimes against humanity during his… …   Wikipedia

  • Trial of Socrates — The Death of Socrates, by Jacques Louis David (1787) …   Wikipedia

  • Trial and conviction of Alfred Dreyfus — The trial and conviction of Alfred Dreyfus was the event that instigated the Dreyfus Affair, a political scandal which divided France during the 1890s and early 1900s. It involved the wrongful conviction of Dreyfus, a Jewish military officer, for …   Wikipedia

  • Trial by combat — 1540s depiction of a 1409 judicial combat in Augsburg (Paulus Hector Mair, Munich cod. icon. 393) Trial by combat (also wager of battle, trial by battle or judicial duel) was a method of Germanic law to settle accusations in the absence of… …   Wikipedia

  • Trial de novo — Civil procedure in the United States Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Doctrines of civil procedure Jurisdiction Subject matter jurisdiction Diversity jurisdiction Personal jurisdiction Removal jurisdiction Venue Change of venue …   Wikipedia

  • Trial court — Court of first instance redirects here. For other uses, see Court of first instance (disambiguation). A trial court or court of first instance is a court in which trials take place. Such courts are said to have original jurisdiction. In the… …   Wikipedia

  • trial — A judicial examination and determination of issues between parties to action, whether they be issues of law or of fact, before a court that has jurisdiction. Tittsworth v. Chaffin, Mo.App., 741 S.W.2d 314, 317. A judicial examination, in… …   Black's law dictionary

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”