Trial of the Major War Criminals before International Military Tribunal ...

According to Section 4,5 1 of the Ordinance, "Standggrichte" can
only pass a sentence of death or deliver the accused to the Secret
State Police. The Ordinance does not indicate which of these two
punishments is to be considered as the milder one. The "Stand-
gerichte" have, apparently, hardly ever made use of the third
possibility, acquittal, mentioned in Section 4, § 1. That was certainly
the intention of the "legislator", to whom the idea of acquittal was
so remote that he omitted to order the keeping of a
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record (even in outline) for such a case. (Compare Section 4, 5 2 of
the Ordinance which only mentions a "condemned" and not an
"accused".
Sentences delivered by "Standgerichte" have to be executed
immediately (Section 4, 5 3 of the Ordinance). Numerous experiences
have shown that the brutal National Socialist legislation has never
been attenuated in practice. At the end of the so-called trial, it is
left to the Judges to decide whether the condemned is to be shot or
hanged (Section 4, 5 3 of the Ordinance). Not even a short delay to
prepare himself for death is granted to a condemned person. Pardon
does not come under consideration in the Ordinance. In any case, the
brutal haste with which the sentences of the "Standgerichte" were
executed, made it impossible.
To sum up it may be said:
The wholly inadequate qualifications of the Judges and the
impossibiljty of rejecting even an obviously prejudiced Judge, make
it questionable whether the institution we are discussing is one
which, measured by the standard of civilised nations, can be
described as a "court".
And do the proceedings before the "Standgerichte" merit the
name "trial"? To recapitulate the main points: we have already
referred to the exclusion of the public. The restriction of the rights
of the defence is a worse feature. Even ,an experienced Counsel
would have found little opportunity for exercising his role at these
entirely irregular trials. But that little opportunity too, was withheld
from the accused.
There is no rule which provides that the accused must be
represented by Counsel at a trial before the "Standgerichte"; and in
practice, according to our information, accused persons have never
been so represented.
It may be difficult to define the conditions which are essential to
enable an institution to possess the character of a