That depends on why we have criminal trials.
Clearly Demjanjuk, guilty or not (and remember much evidence is a questionable Soviet origin), poses no threat to anyone. Rehabilitation as a goal is absurd -- he can't move without help. He'll surprise most if he lives through the trial.
If we have trials to rehabilitate wrongdoers and protect society from future wrongful acts by the accused, this trial is pointless.
But what about more general deterrence -- teaching people that, should they do wrong they will be punished? Again, the trial is a problem.
The vast majority of wicked camp guards escaped punishment and the idea that putting say one in fifty (more likely one in 300) in jail for the last year or so of life will deter the murdering thugs still on the loose in Congo (or wherever you care to look) is risible.
So what's left?
The need for community revulsion to be shown against a crime. This is the best (likely only honest) defence of the death penalty. Some crimes, it is said, cry out for punishment regardless of whether there is any other purpose to their prosecution. Does that justify the prosecution of Demjanjuk? Knowing that, at most, if guilty, he will get four hours and fifty two minutes for every individual he helped kill? Does that show revulsion?
Demjanjuk tried in Germany for Nazi death camp ties
89-year-old retired Ohio auto worker faces charges of being an accessory to the murder of 27,000 Jews at Nazi death camp
DAVID RISINGMUNICH— The Associated Press

A German court put John Demjanjuk on trial Monday to face charges of being an accessory to the murder of 27,900 Jews at a Nazi death camp and his lawyer immediately accused the court in Munich of bias.
The 89-year-old retired Ohio autoworker arrived in a wheelchair to face the final chapter of some 30 years of efforts to prosecute him, wearing a navy baseball cap and covered in a light blue blanket.
His attorney opened the proceedings by filing a motion against the court's judge and prosecutors, accusing them of treating the Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk harsher than Germans who ran the Nazi's Sobidor death camp in occupied Poland.
Lawyer Ulrich Busch charged that the case should never have been brought to trial. He cited cases in which Germans assigned to Sobibor – where prosecutors allege Mr. Demjanjuk served as a guard – were acquitted.
"How can you say that those who gave the orders were innocent ... and the one who received the orders is guilty?" Mr. Busch told the court. "There is a moral and legal double standard being applied today."
Mr. Demjanjuk was deported in May from the United States to Germany, and has been in custody since then. He could face up to 15 years in prison if convicted.
A doctor who examined Mr. Demjanjuk two hours before the trial began said his vital signs were all stable.
Mr. Demjanjuk's family, however, says he is terminally ill. His trial has been limited to two 90-minute sessions per day.
James Morton
1100-5255 Yonge Street
Toronto, Ontario
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416 225 2777
2 comments:
This prosecution is a joke. The only reason Demjanjuk CAN be tried in Germany is because he is NOT German. The German's "forgave" themselves in the late '60s creating laws that make it nigh impossible to prosecute a German citizen for war crimes committed during the Nazi era. So now they feel the need for one more object lesson and turn to an "untermensche" for scapegoating.
Demjanjuk was a Ukrainian in the Red Army, captured and sent to the camps himself. He may have served at Sobibor (but the fact that his first trial was such a schmozzle should bring doubt to anyone's mind), and then in a unit allied with Germany and fought against the Reds. How many of us can say that we wouldn't have done the same in order to survive? Is this the real monster we need to try? Or is it the surviving members of Germany's Nazi elite, the SS officers especially, who live life free and without fear in Germany today?
If the Germans feel the need to remind their people of their terrible past, and I think they REALLY need reminding, then do it on the backs of German war criminals, not on some dumb schmuck from the Ukraine. This smacks of exactly the kind of blaming the "other" that started the Nazi regime.
Jeez Rat, for once I am in total agreement.
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