The proof in this case has demonstrated beyond all doubt that so-called criminals sentenced to death were very rarely used in any of the experiments. True it is that Himmler said prisoners condemned to death should be used in those high-altitude experiments where the long-continued activity of the heart after death was observed by the experimenters. He was generous enough to say that if such persons could be brought back to life, then they were to be “pardoned” to concentration camp for life. But even this unique amnesty had no application to Russians and Poles, who were used exclusively in those experiments. But, assuming for the moment, that this alleged defense might have a mitigating effect under some circumstances, it certainly has no application to this case. Be it noted that this is an affirmative defense by way of avoidance or mitigation. There has been no proof whatever that criminals sentenced to death by an ordinary court could possibly be executed in a concentration camp. Such matters were within the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Justice, not Himmler and the SS. The experimental subjects we are dealing with are those that Himmler could condemn by a “stroke of his pen.” If the inmate used in the experiments was condemned for merely being a Jew, Pole, or Russian, or, for example, having had sexual intercourse with a Jew, it does not answer the criminal charge to say that the victim was doomed to die. Experimentation on such a person is to compound the crime of his initial unlawful detention as well as to commit the additional crime of murder or torture. As has been said by another tribunal, “Exculpation from the charge of criminal homicide can possibly be based only upon bona fide proof that the subject had committed murder or any other legally recognized capital offense; and, not even then, unless the sentencing tribunal with authority granted by the state in the constitution of the court declared that the execution would be accomplished by means of a low-pressure chamber.”[10] In this connection, it might be noted that German law recognized only three methods of execution, namely, by decapitation, hanging, and shooting. (_German Penal Code, Part I, Section 13; Reichsgesetzblatt [Reich Law Gazette], 1933, Part I, p. 151_; _Reichsgesetzblatt 1939, Part I, p. 1457_.) Moreover, there is no proof that any of the experimental subjects had their death sentence commuted to any lesser degree of punishment. Indeed, in the sulfanilamide crimes it was the experiment _plus_ later execution for at least six of the subjects.