. NMT03-T0154
Volume III · Page 154
DR. KOESSL: May it please the Tribunal. If I correctly understand the unuttered yet cogent logic of the charges listed in the indictment, the effect and example of that legal system to which the prosecution tries to attach the stigma of a criminal government institution begins with the Rothaug case. The evidence against him, out of proportion considering the entire framework of the indictment is in contrast to his mere functional position, based on his activities as judge and prosecutor.
Although I am aware of the fact that such purely external disproportion between the importance of the matter on the one hand and the deployment of means on the other hand, as seen from a higher point of view, may cause a shifting of the focus in the eyes of a superficial observer, I am however certain that the desire for a true and just sentence will prevent the overlooking of the limitations and degrees of responsibility.
Yet the direction of the main thrust of the prosecution has become rather clearly discernible by the few submitted documents, out of thousands of files. We face it with a clear conscience, calm and courageously, for documents do not lie.
What distresses us is the evidence submitted in order to impress and otherwise help the main thrust, evidence which has been available in accessible localities and without difficulties, with incriminating tendencies, sometimes even willfully incriminating, and which has offered in hundreds of variations and superlatives an almost unfathomable jungle of assertions, estimates, and opinions.
The mobilization of this evidence compels us to handle the most enervating and tedious detail for truth's sake.
I expect to relieve us of much of this wearisome detail by first treating and solving problems, touched upon by coarsening efforts, misrepresentations, distortions, and half-truths in their entirety and from the broadest viewpoints possible.
At this point in the proceedings, I do not wish to put to the fore legal questions within the framework of the defense, such as the concept of conspiracy or the subjective fact and the confines of the crimes against humanity.
On the other hand, it will be unavoidable within the frame of the producing of evidence to convince the court that the entirely individual biased power position between the state on the one hand and the individual judge or prosecutor on the other hand in accordance with the regulations governing German civil servants allows no scope in the field of the application of the law for
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Tr. pp. 4141-4148
