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Volume III · Page 151
competence for the criminal prosecution of those crimes for which the People's Court was competent, and that he was superior only in regard to the personnel of the Reich public prosecutors at the People's Court. The position of defendant Lantz as chief Reich public prosecutor at the People's Court did not differ in any way from the position of the chief public prosecutors [Oberstaatsanwaelte] at the district courts. When these two points have been clarified, there remains of all accusations made against defendant Lantz only the one accusation of his being coresponsible for the criminal procedure carried through before the People's Court. This brings me to the third erroneous supposition on which the indictment against Lautz is based. It is the fact that the prosecution in its indictment of Lantz, as well as the other Reich public prosecutors under indictment here, obviously started from the assumption that the function and position of a German public prosecutor are the same as that of the prosecuting authority in Anglo-American criminal procedure. As will be proved by the evidence of the defense the position of public prosecutor in the German criminal procedure as well as the position of the prosecution in general in European jurisdiction always has been and still is today fundamentally different from that of the prosecution in Anglo-American jurisdiction. The evidence will prove that the position of a German public prosecutor in relation to the law, the Ministry of Justice and the court in general, as well as his function in individual criminal trials always have been such that he cannot be made responsible in criminal law for the sentences and their execution, neither objectively nor subjectively. The indictment in the case in question is based among other things on the general principles of penal law, such as they are contained in the penal laws of all civilized nations. As an example of this, the prosecution has quoted legal statements by the judges Stephen and Holmes in its verbal indictment. These legal statements concerning penal responsibility are not complete however. I shall prove by further quotations from legal statements by these two ,judges, that also according to Anglo-American conceptions the German prosecutor is not responsible before criminal law for the sentences, provided one starts from the position which the public prosecutor always held in relation to the law, the Ministry of Justice and the court, and from the functions which he carried out in accordance with German law at all times in individual criminal trials. Although I am convinced by virtue of this legal position that defendant Lantz cannot be made responsible before criminal law for the sentences pronounced by the People's Court, I shall, nevertheless, Court prove by my submission of evidence that the People's was an unobjectionable institution; that any trial before it gave the defendants every guaranty of justice; and that the
