German Justice: 2 Days per Murder
Posted By John Moore on February 19, 2003
The German “justice” system just handed down a sentence on the first terrorist convicted in the murder of 3000 people on 9-11. The maximum sentence of 15 years was imposed on Mounir el-Motassadeq.
MAXIMUM OF 15 YEARS? That works out to 43.8 hours per murder!
No wonder the Germans have such a high crime rate. 3000 counts of accessory to first degree murder gives 15 years? And they criticize *our* justice system?
Too bad they didn’t ship him here! We would have needled him, buried him, dug him up and needled him again… for 3000 cycles!
I am proud to live in Arizona where two German citizens were recently executed for murder. We don’t mess around out here in “cowboy land.”
The German Legal System
A short list of some important things to be aware of — you never know when they might come in handy.
Although the German legal system doesn’t match the US constitutional Bill of Rights point for point, American legal specialists who have studied it are usually in agreement that it is fair. It provides many safeguards to ensure the fairness of investigations and trials.
• When authorities question a suspect, they must make it clear that any statement may be used against him or her. A suspect can’t be compelled to testify against himself or herself, and has the absolute right, without undue influence, to remain silent.
• Physical examinations can be made over the suspect’s objection. Blood samples, for example, may be taken if the alleged offense is related to drugs or alcohol, provided this doesn’t pose a health danger.
• The authority of German police is about the same as in the United States. If a party is required to appear in a German court he or she will be properly served with a summons. Failure to appear in court may be punished.
• Drug offenses such as importation, sale or possession of narcotics, including marijuana and hashish, are considered serious crimes.
• German law has very strict requirements regarding the registration and possession of firearms and other weapons.
• Oral contracts are usually binding in Germany if their existence can be proven in court. There are some exceptions, notably in the case of real property sales contracts.
• Anything an individual sells (including a car) automatically carries a six-month warranty under law unless this has been explicitly excluded. Normal wear and tear of a used item is not considered a defect.
• There is no automatic grace period during which an order to buy something may be cancelled. Such items must be accepted unless it can be shown that the salesperson “ambushed” the buyer (for example by approaching him or her at home without invitation.)
• Under German marriage laws, a party can’t file for divorce until he or she has been separated for one year, or for three years if the divorce is contested. Annulments are very rare.
• The differences between German and American laws are particularly obvious when it comes to contracts. In the US it is common, and usually necessary, to spell out everything in a contract. The rule in German law, on the other hand, is: “a short contract is a good contract.” (For example the main issues in rental agreements and leases are codified in a law dealing with landlord-tenant relations. There may be nothing in the lease dealing with notice periods, renovations required or actions in the event of non-payment of rent, but these things are still covered because of the law.)
• An agreement to rent an apartment or house for a fixed term cannot be terminated early except under extraordinary circumstances. A job transfer is usually not an extraordinary circumstance. It’s advisable for Americans to have a German attorney lead them through this maze.
• It is a criminal offense in Germany to show disrespect for the colors, flag, coat of arms or national anthem of the country or any of its states; or to remove, damage or disfigure any publicly displayed national flag or symbol. Insulting an individual can also be a criminal offense, particularly if the individual is an official, such as a policeman or judge, acting under his legal authority.
• The first phase of a German criminal prosecution is pre-trial investigation to determine if there are grounds for a formal indictment. If a prosecutor determines that there is, the case is transferred to the appropriate German court, where the presiding judge decides if the evidence warrants a trial. This contrasts markedly from the US, where a judge will have little or no knowledge of the facts of a case until evidence has been introduced in the courtroom.
• German law requires a prompt and speedy trial, though at least one week must pass between the time of the official notification of the charges and the date of the trial. The defense counsel may make a postponement motion, for example, if more time is needed to prepare the case. The trial will be open to the public unless this is specifically excluded because of public order, public morals or national security. Also, the public is automatically excluded if the accused is a minor.
• There is no such thing as a jury trial in Germany, though court procedures are otherwise similar to those in the US Under German law, as under American law, the accused is presumed innocent until proven guilty. In minor cases there may be only a single judge presiding. Or, if the charges are severe and the accused faces heavy penalties, there may be five persons hearing the case - three professional judges and two lay judges.
• Formal pleas of “guilty” or “not guilty” do not exist in German trials. An accused party can’t plead guilty in order to receive a lesser punishment. Hearsay evidence and, under certain conditions, depositions of absent witnesses can be admitted as evidence in a German court. The attendance of witnesses and the production of evidence can be compelled.
• It is wise to have a German defense counsel unless a case is very minor or the charges are undisputed. The right of the accused to be represented by counsel is carefully protected under German law. In some cases when the accused is charged with an offense punishable by a year or more of confinement, German law mandates the provision of counsel even if the accused doesn’t wish it.
• Attorney fees in low- to mid-level offenses may be roughly between € 800 and € 1,000. However, they can be significantly higher if the trial takes more than a day, or if representation is by an attorney of high repute. There are also court costs which can be quite high if the case is complex. If the accused in criminal cases is acquitted, the court generally pays the attorney’s fees.
• Though he has the duty of defending the accused to the maximum of his ability, a German lawyer is not as active in court as an American lawyer. In a German trial, the judge, not the defense counsel or the prosecutor, obtains the testimony of the witnesses. After the judge is finished, the prosecutor and the defense counsel will be permitted to question witnesses. The aim is to obtain the truth from witnesses by direct questioning rather than through the examination and cross-examination generally used in a US trial.
• Contrary to US law, the German Code of Criminal Procedure allows victims of an offense, or their survivors, the right to participate in the trial as intervenors or private prosecutors. Intervenors are usually represented by counsel and may produce evidence related to the case, as well as question witnesses.
• If the accused is convicted the court usually will credit the entire period of pre-trial confinement. For many crimes a probation period of two to five years is often imposed on first offenders. Depending on the crime, of course, prison terms can range from one month to life; though in practice sentences seldom exceed 15 years.
• Fines can be levied for violations of traffic, environmental, consumer protection and unfair competition laws. They can range from a minimum of € 2,50 to € 50,000 depending on the severity of the violation. Also, objects used in the violation of a law (a car, for example) may be confiscated.
• Confinement begins immediately after the judgment of the court is announced at trial, unless an appeal is pending. In this case the judgment doesn’t become legally effective until and unless the appeal is denied or withdrawn.
• Although German law protects the accused from being repeatedly prosecuted or subjected to double jeopardy, the prosecution as well as the defense may appeal a court judgement, and such an appeal by the prosecution is not considered double jeopardy. Notification for appeal must be submitted within one week after the oral announcement of the courtÔs judgement. A brief supporting the appeal must be submitted within 30 days.
• Special Courts exist in certain public law areas such as tax matters (Finanzgerichte) and social matters (Sozialgerichte). Constitutional law issues are heard by the Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht). Under certain circumstances, accused parties who are not German may have their passports confiscated to keep them from leaving the country. In serious cases, the accused may be placed in pre-trial confinement.
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Before you judge about other country’s justice systems, you should inform yourself better about these things. Germany only has 15 years maximum for murderers - no matter if someone murders one or 100 persons.
The German crime rate (compared to the U.S.) is very low, even without the death penalty!
Two Germans had been excecuted in Arizona for murderer, that’s true - but what you don’t say is that these two men didn’t were allowed to contact the German embassy, lawyers, etc…If these things happens to Americans abroad, your fucking Yankees are screaming loudly and blaming other countries for not being fair - so, how to fuck you are threating foreign criminals in your own country???
The U.S. has the world’s highest crime rate and the death penalty hasn’t change anything of this, either.
Again, don’t judge about other country’s justice systems and laws when you have no real ideas about them at all. Just shut up!
I am a lawyer myself and often annoyed how arrogant Americans are judging about other nations.
Torsten B.
Torsten,
Thank you for your informative comments regarding the German legal system. Admittedly, extrapolating from that one outrageous 15 year sentence was not fair to the entire German justice system (which the U.S. helped to create). But in the case in question, I think my criticism was valid (see below).
To be honest, this post was done in frustration! A person who was involved in killing 3000 Americans, the worst attack in history on our country, was given only 15 years for those murders. We consider that very wrong, and I was and still am angry about that, leading to my angry post. The fact that you have a maximum 15 year sentence for murder or multiple murders is clearly wrong - in some cases - such as terrorists and serial murderers.
At the time that my article was written, the Europeans were just as arrogantly attacking America and our President, and doing so in a way that was directly harmful to our self defense. Your own Foreign Minister, a former terrorist associate and probable terrorist, was obstructing our efforts in fighting terrorism and making highly objectionable statements about us.
What Europeans do not understand is the impact of 9-11 on Americans. We were viciously attacked in a way that has never happened to us before. Almost all of us experienced the disaster live on television. As has happened before in American history (Pearl Harbor 1941), this has led to a dramatic change in American attitudes.
The attack signalled more to come - not garden variety terrorism that Europeans have long become used to, but rather mass casualty terrorism.
Thus we are determined to do our best to both cripple the abilities of the terrorists and remove the sources. And we are angry at those who criticize us for doing so.
European press is full of distortions about the United States. Americans have come to realize that these days the European elite (especially the French) are at least as arrogant as Americans and far more corrupt (not every European, of course… these are generalities).
One of the standard themes in European press is that Americans are arrogant. But to the European governing elites, American arrogance really means that we are willing to act in Iraq without European permission or agreement (although actually most European governments did agree with us).
To European elites, the only opinions that seem to count are those of Germany, France and Belgium. So we consider the European elites, who govern Europe, to be anti-American, arrogant and, frankly, naive.
I personally have been to Europe many times, including Germany and the former East Germany under its communist rulers. My family lived for a time in Paris. Like myself, many Americans are not ignorant of Europe (although far too many Americans are, shamefully, ignorant of almost anything that they should have learned in school).
Regarding crime rates, you are wrong about the U.S. having the world’s highest. This is a typical lie played out in European media. As you suggested that I research the German legal system before attacking it, I suggest that you look at crime statistics before making your assertions - after all, YOU are the lawyer, trained in research.
Here are Interpol 2001 crime statistics (rate per 100,000):
4161 - US7736 - Germany6941 - France9927 - England and Wales
Thus the US has a substantially lower crime rate than the major European countries!
Here are the Interpol 1995 crime statistics (rate per 100,000):
5278 - US8179 - Germany6316 - France7206 - England & Wales
Hence the trend in the US is towards a lower crime rate, while the trend in Europe (except Germany) is towards an increasing crime rate.
It is true that we (USA) have a high murder rate, mostly of criminals killing criminals, but a distressingly large number of people killing their spouses in anger, and the rate of “stranger killings” is rising.
However, the homicide rates have been dropping dramatically as we have been increasing penalties:
Homicide Offender Rate/100,000 by Date in US:
1980 - 57.62000 - 32.4
Also, our murder rate is high largely due to the multicultural nature of our society. Inner city blacks, members of a distinct subculture, have a vastly higher criminal and victim homicide rate than our society as an average:
Homicide Offender Rate/100,000 by Race in US (2000):
3.4 - White25.8 - Black3.2 - Other
It is often hypothesized that blacks are overrepresented in murder statistics due to racism on the part of police and the justice system. If this were true, one would expect that the race of victims would have significantly different distribution than the race of the perpetrators, but this is not the case:
Homicide Victim Rate/100,000 by Race in US (2000):
3.3 - White20.5 - Black2.7 - Other
Thus if you remove homicides committed by blacks, you get a US homicide rate of only 2.3/100,000, lower than Germany (3.27) and France (3.91).
One might ask why blacks are singled out. The reason is that inner city blacks are not representative of our culture. The black population is only about 13% of the total, and many blacks do not live in the inner city welfare cultures. I do not have statistics breaking out homicide by race AND location, but since most homicides committed by blacks are done in the inner city, the overall black statistic should be a good proxy.
Many, including myself, blame the high inner city crime rate on several factors:
Misguided welfare policies, which have helped to create a culture of irresponsibility. The ideology of racial separatism (black power, etc.) and its relative, multiculturalism and the cult of victimology. Centuries of slavery and oppression, which really only came to an end in the 1960-current time period.
That the dramatic increase in the black crime rate came after the rise of the welfare state and the creation of black racial separatism and victimology suggests the causative nature of those factors.
NOTE: Statistics used here are not “cooked” in the sense of using the years that best support my argument. They are simply the oldest and newest years available from the sources.
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As to the Germans executed in Arizona. They were murderers. In fact, they were vicious murderers, since we do not execute just any murderer. There is a strict set of criteria required before applying the death penalty, and a long and rigorous appeal process available to all accused. Foreigners in the U.S. have the same constitutional rights in this regard as citizensl. That includes the right to lawyers (which they had) and the right to be informed of their rights under the US Constitution.
They were not denied the right to contact the German embassy or lawyers. In fact, through their lawyers, they could contact anyone they wanted.
It does appear that the State of Arizona made a mistake in not notifying the German Embassy. This was probably because the brothers had lived here since age 5 and had an American father, and thus the authorities did not know that they were German. It may also be that the authorities simply screwed up. I don’t know. In any case, the US has apologized. It is not the normal practice of the US to violate the Vienna Convention - this was clearly an exception.
However, the failure to do so did not affect the outcome of the case. The brothers were represented. They had a German lawyer. They had American legal representation. The facts of the case would not have changed if the Embassy had been notified.
And yes, we complain when our citizens are mistreated by other countries (although not enough - our State Department is far more interested in maintaining friendly relations than helping Americans overseas, unfortunately). And you should complain (although the work “fucking” is a bit much) when your citizens are mistreated.
But your citizens received justice as determined by the legal system of the country in which they chose to reside.
As far as your statement Again, don’t judge about other country’s justice systems and laws when you have no real ideas about them at all. Just shut up!
I knew enough about the German justice system to recognize that a grossly inadequate sentence was handed out to an international mass murderer. That was what I was complaining about.
And no, I won’t “shut up”.
To paraphrase your ending sentence:
I am an American myself and am often annoyed at how arrogant Europeans are judging our great nation.
BTW… I put so much work into this reply, that I decided to post the crime statistics portion of it as a blog entry here.
What do you expect? Do you think that we should change our laws only because the U.S. wants so??? Shall we always do what the U.S. wants - or are we not an independent nation? When we have a max. sentence of 15 years for murderer in this country, so we have it - these are our laws and not yours - and we surely definately not change it, only because some Americans are angry about that.
And about these two German murderers in Arizona - well, I know their mother and family and that’s why I am very well informed about that case - they WERE denied of access from the German Embassy and lawyers, etc. - that’s also why the German government sued the U.S. a few months later at The Hague, maybe you have not heard about that.
Joschka Fischer (the German foreign minister), never was a terrorist. I also know himself for many years and I think that you also should be more careful with what you said. In the 1960s and 70s, he really was joining some radical groups and wings but he now has totally changed and denied his old political views and ideas - but, he never was a terrorist. Again, be careful what you say…
You also says that you’re so upset what Europeans thinks and feels about the U.S., but it’s the arrogance of the U.S. that makes us feel like this - you Americans always thinks that you are always right, only because you are Americans - you have no respect for the ideas and feelings of other nations and feelings - that’s also why your current president (George W. Bush) is so much hatred over here - but, you Americans are unwilling to understand this. You are so blind and blended from your overpatriotism that you have no space for other countries’ thinking and feelings in your heads…only what America says and thinks counts for you - regardless what other nations thinks and feels. Right? This is the arrogance that WE Europeans doesn’t like about the U.S. today.
Again, don’t judge on other countries when you cannot accept other countries’s views and opinions….you Americans always say that you respect freedom of speech, but you only accept that when everybody agrees with America, otherwise they get bashed - right??? Yes, this is your “freedom” of speech.
Torsten
Torsten,
I don’t think you should change your laws only because the U.S. wants you too, and I never said that. I think you should change that law because it is wrong. I should be just as free to criticize it as you are to criticize the American death penalty or our president or anything else. And that is what I am doing. How you can interpret that to be some sort of US arrogance is beyond my comprehension. It is simply my exercise of free speech to criticize your law.
…regarding the German murderers here in Arizona…
I have read reports of the hearings at the Hague. I saw no allegation that the murderers were denied either a lawyer or access to the Embassy. I saw allegations (admitted to by the US) that they were not notified of their right to access to the Embassy. This is a critical difference from your assertion.
If, as you allege, they had been denied access to a lawyer, their case would have been thrown out on the first hearing! I am sure you know that much about American law.
Furthermore, Amnesty International, a foe of the death penalty, would certainly raise such an issue. And yet in their report on this incident, they do not. Likewise, the German government appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court for a stay of execution. They could just as easily appealed on the grounds of lack of representation, at which point the Supreme Court would have granted the stay and ordered the prisoners released. No such issue was raised and no such order was issued.
Thus I would ask that you provide documentary evidence of those assertions - surely in a case with this notoriety such information is online.
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Regarding Joschka Fisher, it is interesting that you know him personally. Note that I did not say that he *was* a terrorist, but that he *probably* was a terrorist. I still hold to that position. I have found a citation by a person in a position to know who alleges that he was a terrorist. In any case, you should read the following and see if it corresponds to your knowledge of him:
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Weapons for one of Carlos the Jackal’s operations were kept in Joschka Fischer’s apartment, which he shared with a known terrorist:
……………
From National Review Online by Ion Mihai Pacepa:
Twenty-two years later, Carlos [the Jackal] was arrested in Khartoum, Sudan, by the French counterintelligence service (DST), with whose director, Yves Bonnet, I had earlier cooperated after leaving Romania. Carlos was immediately taken to Paris, where he was charged with killing two French police officers in 1979; he was sentenced to life in prison. During interrogation, Carlos asserted that his deputy for the OPEC operation had been German terrorist Hans Joachim Klein [Joschka Fischer's room-mate], codenamed “Angie,” who had killed an OPEC security man and an Austrian policeman during that attack. Carlos also testified that the weapons used for the OPEC operation had been kept in an apartment in Frankfurt/Main, where Klein was then living with two other “red revolutionaries” of those days, Daniel Cohn-Bendit and Joschka Fischer.
Now I don’t know about you, but if one of my room-mates was storing terrorist weapons, I would know it!
…also…
Joschka Fischer, who testified as a character witness at Klein’s trial in 2001, refuted as “grotesque” the allegation that the arms used in the OPEC attack had been kept in the apartment he shared with Hans Joachim Klein and Daniel Cohn-Bendit (currently a member of the European Parliament). I have reason to question Fischer’s statement. In a January 1976 thank-you message to Ceausescu — also sent through me — Qaddafi had emphasized that Carlos’s OPEC operation would not have been possible without the help of the DIE (which had provided the blueprints of OPEC headquarters) and a “West German revolutionary group in Frankfurt/Main” (which had provided Carlos with both manpower and arms). (In giving me the message, Qaddafi, who knew I had at one time been stationed in Frankfurt/Main as chief of the DIE’s West German station, specifically called my attention to the mention of “your” Frankfurt.)”
……………
Also,
After Carlos was arrested by the DST, German journalist Bettina Roehl (daughter of the late Ulrike Meinhof, co-leader of the terrorist Baader-Meinhof organization) revealed that Fischer did indeed belong to a Frankfurt/Main terrorist group during the 1970s. She also provided pictures showing a helmeted Fischer beating a German police officer during an April 7, 1973, violent demonstration in Frankfurt/Main. The pictures show Fischer fighting side by side with Klein, Carlos’s deputy in the 1975 attack on the OPEC headquarters in Vienna. In 2002, after these photographs had been authenticated by the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Fischer publicly apologized to the beaten police officer. Bettina Roehl also disclosed that Fischer had been the main advocate of using petrol bombs in a 1976 demonstration in which a policeman almost died of terrible burns. This information was also vehemently denied by the German foreign minister.
Someone who seriously burns a policeman in a democratic society is, if not a terrorist, certainly a vicious criminal. And his associations with known terrorists, almost surely knowing associations, makes him a supporter of them and thus a terrorist himself. Although any single allegation is not conclusive, the weight of evidence is substantial.
Now I am sure he regrets his youthful mistakes. Many people do stupid things when young. Some young terrorists even grow up to be democratically elected Prime Ministers (Menachem Begin). But what he should not be able to do is erase the past.
I am an American myself (from the United States), born in Cook County, IL. which is having some trouble with its justice system especially in regards to the death penalty.
As to the arrogance of me and my countrymen, I’ll let this site: http://www.tinyvital.com/Misc/frenchjokes.htm (”Click for France Jokes”) speak for some us.
I’m also hearten to know that I have countrymen knowledgeable of Lenin and his ways who are watching me.
And since I was led here by Chief Wiggles (who has a bulls-eye on his back and is serving in Iraq) with these words:
“It is the self-serving, self-centered individuals of the world that perpetuates the ill feelings amongst human beings creating strife,
contention, distrust, disbelief, hatred, jealousy and feelings of being used. The self-serving people of the world projecting their
attitudes into the behaviors of others, defining and assuming others are operating under the same belief system. Thus interpreting and
defining other’s behavior as stemming from the same self-serving, self-centered belief.”
I am more confused now than when I started surfing the net an hour ago and I think that I will give it up and take my children to park.
this is pretty interesting stuff. i had the opportunity to travel to Germany for two weeks last month. i had a fascinating conversation with a German man who was home from Ireland where he works. he was very clearly a member of the left. he described himself as “coming out of the labor movement.”
he explained to me that the main difference between the mainland Europe legal system and that of the UK and USA is the concept of common law. the USA/UK system assumes that law is made by codifying its application. law is simply a system of general customs and norms. if it was done a particular way for a while, it will continue to be that way. if something is similar to an old problem, the old way of doing it will be bent a bit to fit, and we’ll run with it.
he went on to explain that mainland Europe worked on a system that presumed that everything needed a law to explain it. this is probably why it doesn’t strike anyone in Europe as strange that they have laws governing the maximum weight of a bagel and the maximum height of a swingset. it would be interesting to get Torsten B.’s take on this.
i will say Torsten, please don’t come here (virtually anyway) and be directly insulting. it isn’t very polite and it hardly helps your chances in getting your point across. i had a great time in your country. i bought some good German wine (in the city of Westhofen, where i stayed, great Weinfest!) and i look forward to going back to see all my new German friends. they are at least nice enough not to curse me out when i tell them i voted for George W. Bush and i will again in 2004. i encourage you to visit us. we’re just like you guys. once you show yourself a little bit friendly, we’ll treat you like family.
Torsten,
Who, exactly, said that Germany is obliged to change its laws? Who, precisely, said that Germany ought not be an independent nation and should do whatever the United States wants it to do? The only opinion expressed was that German law is too lenient in imposing a maximum penalty of 15 years for murder - apparently any murder, or any number of murders. Your reply, which was a list of German civil rights, was largely irrelevant. No one said the German justice system was brutal, oppressive, or uncivilized. Someone just said that sending a murderer to prison for fifteen years was too lenient. I recall reading somewhere that the average incarceration time for an American murderer is about eight years. That, and not acting as though someone said there are no civil rights in Germany, or that Germany shouldn’t be an independent country, would have been a far better reply than yours.
Anyhow, the opinion about lenient prison sentences was just that — an opinion, not an ultimatum. No one threatened to sever diplomatic relations or invade Germany over it. If countries like Germany (or the United States) are going to be part of a community of nations, it’s unreasonable of their citizens to expect only flattery, praise, and approval from their neighbors. So let me quote you:
Sound familiar, Torsten? It’s the writing of a German that expresses something besides flattery, praise, and approval of Americans and the United States. No one kicked you off the forum for expressing it. They just listened to your opinion, and responded to it — without filthy language, by the way.
What arrogance! As thought the opinion of a German citizen could be disagreed with! You see how easy it is to inflate disagreements into accusations about someone being arrogant? I don’t take your criticism that way, as though Germans are so arrogant that they think Americans have no right to disagree with them or criticize them. But I think the constant drumbeat charge of US “arrogance” has a lot of that in it — it seems to condemn Americans as “arrogant” whenever Americans say that what they’re doing is right and the Europeans who disagree with it are wrong. If that’s arrogance, then human life is arrogant and there seems little reason to make arrogance sound like a particularly-American vice.
We say you’re too lenient giving a terrorist a 15-year sentence for killing 3,000 people. You say we’re acting illegally when we invade Iraq without the approval of the UN Security Council. I say we express our disagrements and muddle along as best we can with them. But let’s not demonize each other as barbarians who live outside the general rules of civilized life — that would be too American, no?
SecretAgentMan
OK, I’ll bite. I’m Austrian rather than German, so I’ll comment from a more general European point of view, if you permit.
Your statement “German Justice: 2 Days per Murder” is, of course, highly misleading. Still, it is true that as a rule we do not add up various crimes committed in one single act. The maximum penalty, since we do generally not believe in capital punishement, is lifelong imprisonement (that’s true for Germany also, BTW), but that doesn’t mean, that someboy who murdered two or threee or twenty people is going to prison twice or three or twenty times as long as your “normal” 1-person murderer.
Do you really believe that murdering two people is twice as bad as murdering “only” one? Or in the case you mentioned, 3000 times as bad?
And why stop with murder? Let’s take involuntary manslaughter, or a traffic accident, as an example. Say there was a bus of school schildren involved, leaving ten dead. Now, is that really ten times as bad as a single dead driver?
To make a long rambling short, we generally do not think so. People are tried according to their guilt, the maximum penalty is written down in the penal code and that’s that.
> MAXIMUM OF 15 YEARS? That works out to 43.8
> hours per murder!
That only matters if you take the sentence to be some kind of “price” to be paid for the crime. A point of view we generally do not subscribe to. It may be a shocking revelation, but if there had been “only” 100 victims, the sentence had probably been the same. (That’s true for the other direction, too, of course.)
> Too bad they didn’t ship him here! We would
> have needled him, buried him, dug him up and
> needled him again… for 3000 cycles!
Not to put too fine a point about it: That is precisely the reason they didn’t ship him there. We don’t extradict people to countries where they face the death penalty.
Ingmar,
Thanks for your response.
I think the problem with the German approach is that it does nothing to deter mass murder as compared to a simple murder, even though mass murder does in fact cause far more harm to society than a single murder (even though that is a horrible calculus). Thus the conspirator in the 9-11 penalty was in fact guilty of a much worse act than simple murder.
While we disagree over capital punishment, objection to capital punishment is certainly a defensible position and I cannot scorn Europe for that position.
What is amazing is that this person, who conspired to commit the worst act of terrorism in history, was not even sentenced to life imprisonment. That is the real outrage that Americans cannot understand. It is a gross injustice. In this sense, I consider the law, whether ours or yours or German, to be capable of rendering legal results without rendering justice.
The principle here is that the act *was* worse than a single murder. The intent and effect was mass murder, and that should have a greater deterrent than ordinary murder, because of its disproportionately greater effect on society, which is its *intent*.
In the US, if someone kills 10 people in involuntary manslaughter, they may be convicted of ten crimes. But they are often sentenced such that the punishment is the same as one person. This is because the degree of negligence in such a case can be used to calibrate the sentence.
As for the death penalty, a sentence of death requires specific circumstances beyond the basic crime. Thus a person can be convicted of first degree murder (a murder for hire, a premeditated murder, etc) and yet to be sentenced to death additional conditions must apply… the crime must be particularly heinous. The only problem I have with the death penalty is that sometimes innocent people are executed. However, I balance that with the fact that killers who are not put to death often go on to kill other people and prison guards, and the fact that the death penalty does in fact deter some people from committing worse crimes.
The biggest fault in this system is that the legal system assumes itself to be perfect, hence a guilty verdict from just barely adequate evidence is equivalent to a guilty verdict from absolutely overwhelming evidence. In my opinion, if the evidence is not overwhelming, the sentence should be life, not death.
> I think the problem with the German approach is that it does nothing to deter mass murder as
> compared to a simple murder
Perhaps not. But then, there is a built-in upper limit for the punishment anyway. I mean, if you have the death penalty, you can execute somebody once. If you don’t, you can lock them away for life. But it doesn’t make much of a difference whether he get’s “life” once, ot twice or twenty times, does it?
> even though mass murder does in fact cause far more harm to society than a single murder
I grant you that. That’s why, in my opinion, the strictest possible punishment was called for. As we’ll see below, however, that was 15 years. (Perhaps I should say “permittable” rather than possible.)
> While we disagree over capital punishment,
We disagree over it as nations. Personally I’m not so sure, but the European Council urged it’s members to abolish it (except for times of war), it’s usually written down in the various constitutions and even Turkey as the last country has abolished it in the meantime.
> What is amazing is that this person, who conspired to commit the worst act of terrorism
> in history, was not even sentenced to life imprisonment.
It is, I’m afraid, in accordance with German law. (I predict he would have gotten life in Austria, but then you never know.) Murder as such, of course, is punishable by life imprisonment. The crime that was tried, however, was “complicity in murder”, and, perhaps somewhat unfortunate, German penal law (§ 27 II StGB, if you must know) requires a mandatory reduction from life to 15 years in a case like that.
Call it injust, it’s still the law.
> In this sense, I consider the law, whether ours
> or yours or German, to be capable of rendering legal results without rendering justice.
Well, yes, but that’s really no news, I’m afraid.
> The only problem I have with the death penalty is that sometimes innocent people are executed.
Yes. That in itself could be reason enough to be against it.
By the way, Hitler was an Austrian.
German Law system ? ” It sucks ” After seeing a documentry on TV about a crack dealer being arrested for the 8th time in 2 years ?
and how about some guy who beat to death some 80 year old lady and got 18 months ,, yeah we read about it every day , and Its makeing us SICK
I rest my case .
Hitler may have been an Austrian (he started as a Viennese artist), but he was elected Chancellor of Germany by the German people.
While our justice system has many flaws, my objection is simple: the German system, which assigns 15 years (maximum allowable penalty) to someone who was an accomplish in the largest mass murder in history, is totally grotesque. And that is my problem. Such a system has no respect for innocent life, having way too much respect for criminals.
The cases you cite about the US were cherry picked. If the crack dealer was arrested for the 8th time in 2 years, either they had insufficient evidence at the time of arrest, or he was giving them information leading to the arrest of higher ups. He could have been sentenced to much more. Likewise, the guy who beat to death an 80 year old lady and got 18 months had to have had some remarkably unusual situation. Normally he would have gotten at least 20 years and depending on the circumstances could have gotten death.
What I think is most wrong with the US system (and this is true in much of the world) is that we give too-large sentences to non-violent criminals, and the have some prohibitions (such as many drug laws) that are counterproductive.
Half of all people in federal prison are there on drug charges.
The other biggest problem is that we don’t adequately control prisoners. The result is an epidemic of prison rape, and violent organizations formed in prison (usually along racial or ethnic lines) which extend out into the community.