 |
| governing Ordinance No. 7 as expressed in Article VI (a),
reading as follows: |
| |
"The tribunal shall
—
(a) confine the trial strictly to an expeditious hearing
of the issues raised by the charges." |
An expeditious hearing, in our humble opinion, implies the necessity
of considering whether the evidence before the Court is legally sufficient to
support a finding of guilty when a motion is filed by the defense before the
opening of its case.
Therefore the defense would say that its motion is
well within the scope of the provisions of Ordinance No. 7.
Should Your
Honors be inclined to sustain this motion, the defense fully realize that in
such event, it will not have an opportunity to present its own most valuable
evidence relating to these charges by which the whole case of the prosecution
would be put in an entirely different light. But it is the intention of the
defense to accept this disadvantage, as the defense, bearing in mind its
position as officers of the Court, feel that it is obliged to do whatever is
possible to expedite the trial, and therefore consider this obligation more
important than the chance to refute the prosecution's case by producing the
defense evidence.
There should be no doubt that the trial would be
shortened to a considerable extent, should this motion be sustained by the
Court, as the defense then need not cope with the vast amount of evidence
produced by the prosecution in connection with the charges under counts one and
five. The defense therefore feel that by filing this motion it is contributing
in a constructive manner to the speeding up of this trial, a subject which has
been raised repeatedly in the past weeks.
Now I beg to submit, with
Your Honors' permission, the reasons in support of this motion as briefly as I
can:
I. The defendants are indicted as having taken part in planning,
preparation, initiation, and waging of aggressive wars and invasions (count
one) furthermore as having participated as leaders, organizers, instigators,
and accomplices in the formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy
to commit crimes against peace (count five).
The prosecution, in
establishing the responsibility of the defendants, refers to the provisions of
Control Council Law No. 10 dated 20 December 1945.
Dealing, in the
first place, with the question as to which law should be applied when
considering the relevancy of the evidence produced with regard to counts one
and five, the defense maintains that this question should be judged under the
generally recognized and established rules of international law as laid down
|
475 |
. 
