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Volume VI · Page 155
| defended in the United States since their
inception as bases for jurisdiction by American courts. He, who as defense
counsel, had to experience during 12 years of Nazi dictatorship how these
principles, hitherto in force also in Germany — especially the principle
of a just hearing before an unprejudiced court before which all human beings
are equal — were more and more disregarded, will welcome with all his
heart the reestablishment and application of these legal principles of penal
law in Germany which were formulated by the American Tribunal No. II,* (1) Any
person accused of having committed a crime will at first be considered as not
guilty, and (2) He will be given the benefit of the doubt until such time as
his guilt is positively proved. And if this Court, in addition, continues that,
if the results of the procuring of evidence may be equally taken as proof for
his guilt or innocence, they are to be interpreted in the sense of his
innocence; we recognize herein the old legal principle which was taken from the
Roman Law and was also in force in the German Penal Law up to the Hitler
regime: in dubio pro reo. The prosecution formulates its responsibility with the first sentence of its opening statement when it says — "The responsibility of opening the first trial of industrialists for capital transgressions of the law of nations, imposes on the prosecution, above all things the obligation of clarity." To the same extent it is the duty of the defense to bring about this clarity by its argumentation and by its submission of evidence. Only a clear and objective ascertainment of the facts by application of the basic legal principles mentioned above can lead to a verdict by the Court which is fit to establish and strengthen one of the most important pillars of the democratic state, namely the confidence of the people in an independent jurisdiction and justice. To the judgments which you, the judges of this Tribunal, pass here in Nuernberg, the attention of a people is directed, a people who had to stand the most severe shocks in its legal sphere during the period of the Hitler dictatorship. Therefore it is not surprising that this people, to a large extent, faces the American courts and the judgments pronounced in Nuernberg with skepticism. Confidence in law and justice and in an independent judgment can only be regained with difficulty when it has been so thoroughly lost as was unfortunately the case under the Hitler regime. "Justitia est fundamentum regnorum!" Thus reads also the warning cry of the venerable fighter during the Hitler period, His Eminence, the Cardinal Count Gahlen. Whoever had the |
* See judgment in case of United States vs.. Erhard Milch, volume II, page 778, this series.
