Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 The Evidence Supporting International Criminal Convictions
- 2 Questions Unanswered: International Witnesses and the Information Unconveyed
- 3 The Educational, Linguistic, and Cultural Impediments to Accurate Fact-Finding at the International Tribunals
- 4 Of Inconsistencies and Their Explanations
- 5 Perjury: The Counternarrative
- 6 Expectations Unfulfilled: The Consequences of the Fact-Finding Impediments
- 7 Casual Indifference: The Trial Chambers' Treatment of Testimonial Deficiencies
- 8 Organizational Liability Revived: The Pro-Conviction Bias Explained
- 9 Help Needed: Practical Suggestions and Procedural Reforms to Improve Fact-Finding Accuracy
- 10 Assessing the Status Quo: They Are Not Doing What They Say They Are Doing, but Is What They Are Doing Worth Doing?
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
1 - The Evidence Supporting International Criminal Convictions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 The Evidence Supporting International Criminal Convictions
- 2 Questions Unanswered: International Witnesses and the Information Unconveyed
- 3 The Educational, Linguistic, and Cultural Impediments to Accurate Fact-Finding at the International Tribunals
- 4 Of Inconsistencies and Their Explanations
- 5 Perjury: The Counternarrative
- 6 Expectations Unfulfilled: The Consequences of the Fact-Finding Impediments
- 7 Casual Indifference: The Trial Chambers' Treatment of Testimonial Deficiencies
- 8 Organizational Liability Revived: The Pro-Conviction Bias Explained
- 9 Help Needed: Practical Suggestions and Procedural Reforms to Improve Fact-Finding Accuracy
- 10 Assessing the Status Quo: They Are Not Doing What They Say They Are Doing, but Is What They Are Doing Worth Doing?
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
Summary
THE PREVALENCE OF EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY
Although the Nuremberg trial provides the legal, theoretical, and normative underpinnings for today's international criminal proceedings, it does not stand as their evidentiary model. The high-level Nazi officials who were prosecuted at the Nuremberg Tribunal were convicted on the strength of their own documentation. Nazi leaders kept meticulous written records; as one Nuremberg prosecutor put it: “These Nazis had a mania for writing things down. It is an amazing psychological phenomenon that not one of these men could have a minor political conversation without recording it.” Recognizing that witnesses had fallible memories and might collapse under cross-examination, lead prosecutor Robert Jackson decided to use witnesses sparingly and instead to base his prosecution of the Nazis almost exclusively on their own documents. Nuremberg prosecutors reviewed approximately one hundred thousand documents, and they presented a substantial proportion of these to the Tribunal: The prosecution put 331 documents into the record during the first four hours of the Nuremberg trial, and it submitted many thousands of documents during the trial as a whole.
Unlike the leaders of Nazi Germany, who meticulously documented their illegal acts, the architects of more recent atrocities have left few written records, and what written records they did leave often are not made available to prosecutors. Consequently, the vast bulk of the evidence presented to the current international tribunals comes in the form of witness testimony.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Fact-Finding without FactsThe Uncertain Evidentiary Foundations of International Criminal Convictions, pp. 11 - 20Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010