Trials of war criminals before the Nuernberg military tribunals under control council law no. 10, volume IIIVarious
History
Trials of war criminals before the Nuernberg military tribunals under control council law no. 10, volume III
Various
Nuremberg Trial of Major German War Criminals, Nuremberg, Germany, 1945-1946; War crime trials -- Germany -- Nuremberg
MR. LAFOLLETTE: 365. This mimeograph may not be completely
correct. I am sure that’s right. Otherwise, if that should not be
correct I will advise the Court.
The overt acts are evidence under counts two and three of this
indictment not only of the intent with which the preceding acts were
done, but also of the fact that each of those defendants who knew
that the preceding acts were being performed--and it is legally
inconceivable to believe that they did not know--had knowledge of the
fact that there was probable danger that the preceding acts would
result in the overt crimes or that the preceding acts, being unlawful
_eo ipso_ and therefore felonious, would result in the overt
acts as the natural consequence of preceding felonious acts. This is
murder--whenever a homicide resulted from the foregoing act. And the
murder being “an act usually done pursuant to” the “previous scheme and
plans” establishes the guilty intent of each and all of the defendants
to commit that murder who stood in any of the relationships to the
murder defined in paragraph 2, article II of Law No. 10.
We have also said that it is an inevitable result of the murder of
hundreds of thousands and millions of humans that such mass murder
dulls our realization that the basic simple principles of the law which
define the crime of murder of a single human furnish the standard by
which was determined the guilt of those who have murdered those humans.
A review of these basic rules is therefore proper.
In 1877 Mr. Justice Stephen undertook to restate the English common law
of homicide as he then found it. He states that an unlawful homicide,
without adequate provocation, was murder, if it followed from an act
accompanied by one of the following states of mind: (1) an intention to
cause the death of or grievous bodily harm to any person; (2) knowledge
that the act will probably cause either of the results, even though the
actor hopes that they might not occur or is indifferent about them; or
(3) an intention to commit a felony or to resist a peace officer in the
execution of his duty.
As to the first category, no one can quarrel and there is evidence to
support the commission of such murders by individual defendants.
As to the second category, Mr. Justice Holmes thought that the
actor’s awareness of the danger was immaterial, that the standard was
completely objective. In Comm. _vs._ Pierce (1884) 138 Mass. 165,
page 178, he stated his view succinctly--
“When the jury are asked whether a stick of a certain size was a
deadly weapon they are not further asked whether the defendant
knew it was so.” /#
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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