Text: English     International Military Tribunal "Blue Series," Vol. 3, p. 543
		14 Dec. 45 what was valid then should be all the more valid at this stage of the Trial. I should like to emphasize my suggestion particularly with regard to the, Defendant Dr. Kaltenbrunner himself, since it was not until the spring of 1943 that he became Chief of the Reich Security Main Office and since, in the opinion of the Defense, many, if not all, of his signatures were forged and the entire, executive function attached to the concentration camps and the things connected with them lay exclusively in Himmler's hands. That I hope to prove at a later date. I mentioned it now in order to justify my suggestion. THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal would like to hear counsel for the Chief Prosecutor of the United States. MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: May it please the Tribunal, Mr. Dodd, who had charge of the matter which is under discussion, left for the United States yesterday; and I shall have to substitute for him as best I can. This Tribunal sits under a Charter which recognized the impossibility of covering a decade of time, a continent of space, a million acts, by ordinary rules of proof, and at the same time finishing this case within the lives of living men. We do not want to have a trial here that, like the trial of Warren Hastings, lasted 7 years. Therefore the Charter sets up only two standards by which any evidence. I submit, may be rejected. The first is that evidence must be relevant to the issue. The second is it must have some probative value. That was made mandatory upon this Tribunal in Article 19 because of the difficulty of ever trying this case if we used the technical rules of Common Law proof. One of the reasons this was a military tribunal, instead of an ordinary court of law, was in order to avoid the precedent-creating effect of what is done here on our own law and the precedent control which would exist if this were an ordinary judicial body. Article 19 provides that the Tribunal shall not be bound by technical rules of evidence. It shall adopt and apply to the greatest possible extent expeditious and non-technical procedure and shall admit any evidence which it deems to have probative value. That was made mandatory, that it shall admit any evidence which it deems to have probative value. The purpose of that provision, Your Honors, I may say, was this: That the whole controversy in this case — and we have no doubt that there is room for controversy — should be centered upon the value of evidence and not on its admissibility. We have no jury. There is no occasion for applying jury rules. Therefore, when a piece of evidence is offered, there are two questions which arise: Does it have probative value? If it has no probative value, then it should not encumber the records, of course. 543
		Text: English     International Military Tribunal "Blue Series," Vol. 3, p. 543     Last modified: October 10, 1998 Copyright © 1998 The Mazal Library and The Holocaust History Project. All rights reserved. Technical/administrative contact: webmaster@holocaust-history.org Find a typo? Let us know.