. NMT03-T0407
Volume III · Page 407
| A. The extraordinary objection, which was
introduced in 1939, was based on a bill which had already been drafted. The
purpose was to be able to correct obvious mistakes in judicial decisions, and
thereby to effect uniformity in the practice of the courts.* Q. In article 2, section 3 of the law of 16 September 1939, it says: "Against final criminal sentences, the Chief Reich Prosecutor at the Reich Supreme Court can file an objection within 1 year after the sentence becomes final, if, on account of serious misgivings against the justness of the sentence, he deems a new trial and decision in the case necessary." In paragraph 3 of the same section, it says, "If the first sentence was passed by the People's Court, the objection is to be filed by the Chief Reich Prosecutor at the People's Court, and the second trial is to be held by the special senate of the People's Court." According to this, one should assume that the two Chief Reich Prosecutors were those who had to decide whether an extraordinary objection was to be made or not. Please comment on this. A. This assumption would be incorrect. According to all the regulations and the constitutional basis of this law, it was without doubt that such a far-reaching statement could be made only by the head of the State for the government, because the extraordinary objection repealed the sentence which had been pronounced, and returned the case to the stage at which it was before the trial. Thus, if an extraordinary objection was raised, a new trial had to take place as if nothing had happened before. Therefore, through internal instructions, it was assured that the two Chief Reich Prosecutors, the one at the People's Court and the other at the Reich Supreme Court, could raise an extraordinary objection only by virtue of an order of the Minister of Justice as the representative of the leadership of the State. And this is not expressed in the law because according to the German conception of a trial, the Minister of Justice cannot make any direct statements in a trial. The two Chief Reich Prosecutors, therefore, made these statements, as I said, only from case to case on orders of the Minister, which as a rule, were even issued so unequivocably that the statement which had to be made, with the reasons for it, was in each case prescribed to the Chief Reich Prosecutors. Thus, the Chief Reich Prosecutor ,just as the other authorities, for instance, the attorneys general or the presidents of the courts were not |
* Concerning the purpose of the extraordinary objection, the defendant Schlegelberger stated the following in a letter to Hitler on 6 May 1942: "In order to accelerate the setting aside of such decisions [judgments not accomplishing the unrelenting punishment of criminals], you. my Fuehrer, created the extraordinary objection to the Reich Supreme Court. With the help of this legal resource the judgment against Schlitt, which you mentioned in the session of the Reichstag, was quashed within 10 days by sentence of the Reich Supreme a Court. Schlitt was sentenced to death and executed at once." (See Doc. NG-102, Pros. Ex. 76, reproduced in sec. V G 2 a.)
