THE RUDOLF REPORT

GERMAR RUDOLF · THE RUDOLF REPORTagainst me. Despite my lack of legal qualification I believe I have beencalled upon to raise my voice on this subject, since the numerous formaldefects of the German legal system have apparently not been dealtwith by those with the professional competence to do so.Since I am no legal expert but only one who has been selfeducatedon the subject through painful experience, I hope readers willexcuse my ineptness of expression. If I make frequent reference here tomy trial before the District Court of Stuttgart (ref. 17 KLs 83/94), it isbecause these examples serve to indicate major problems in the Germansystem of government and its judicial system.No Word-For-Word RecordUntil the end 70s, a record of the proceedings was kept duringGerman criminal trials, in which the statements of witnesses and responsesof the accused were set down. The contents of this record werenever relevant for an appeal or revision. For example, if in the record itsaid ‘The witness said A’, but in the decision the court stated ‘The witnesssaid B’, the assertion in the decision would be taken as the factand that in the record would be considered meaningless.In the course of a change in the German criminal law at the end ofthe 70s, the duty to make entries in the record of the proceedings wasremoved for reasons of economy for all courts higher than the CountyCourts. What appears now in German trial records is something like‘The witness made statements on the subject’ or ‘The accused made adeclaration’. The substance of what was said cannot be found there andit can no longer be proven by documentation when the court usesstatements incorrectly. 565In other nations observing the rule of law, such as the UnitedStates, Canada, Australia, or Austria, word-by-word transcripts of the565 There is always the possibility that the defense can hire its own stenographer to record theproceedings and type them up later. Then there would have to be a motion to insert this recordinto the record of the proceedings. Motions of this sort are always denied because the GermanCode of Criminal Procedures does not provide any rules for such records. In order to defeatthe usual refusal of the court to accept such a motion on the grounds that the transcript is factuallyincorrect, the motion would have to be made either before the dismissal of the witnessor immediately after the response of the accused or the defense attorney. Thereby the doubtsof the court could be allayed through requestioning of the witnesses or the accused. Althoughthe record of the statements can be entered into the record of the proceedings with the (denied)motion in this way, they will still be irrelevant in appeals and revision procedures. Consideringthe expense to the accused in time and money of such an effort over the course of, say, athirty-day trial with twenty witnesses, it should be clear how impractical this scenario is.332