A. The material decision was made exclusively by the Minister of Justice. That is, only he personally made it on the basis of a report made to him by his Referent personally. In particular it was like that; in case of every decree issued by the Ministry it had been assured that either by the signature of the Under Secretary or the Minister, or the division chief, it was made clear that the decision had actually been made by the Minister in this case.
Q. Did you ever raise an extraordinary objection without having an order from the Minister?
A. That never happened.
Q. You just said that the two chief Reich prosecutors as the officials, as supervising authorities of the administration of justice, for example, attorneys general, presidents of the courts of appeal, etc., had the right to suggest to the Minister of Justice that he should issue an order to raise an extraordinary objection. Did you make use of that possibility?
A. I only did so very infrequently on my own initiative. I still remember a few cases in which sentences pronounced by the senate presided over by Freisler were concerned. We were per se not very much inclined to attack sentences pronounced by our own court by such a legal recourse. However, Minister Thierack, though not much inclined to admit objections, occasionally could be made to do so in cases presided over by Freisler. The cases which are pertinent here, I may perhaps describe briefly. The first Senate of the People’s Court in one case had condemned a person to death because of treason. The facts were as follows: The defendant had transferred a model 38 machine gun into the hands of the enemy; he had obtained the machine gun and given it to an enemy agent. The enemy had known about this machine gun for a long time because they had captured many of these machine guns on the battlefield. Thus, only attempted treason could be the case, and the indictment was filed in that manner. Nevertheless, the Senate passed the death sentence. Here the extraordinary objection was permitted. A second case was a death sentence against a member of the Protectorate, the opinion of which consisted of three-quarters of a page by Freisler. In this case I suggested that this was not an opinion at all, since from the facts one could not find out at all what the defendant had done; and because of this legal mistake the extraordinary objection should be allowed. This extraordinary objection, therefore, was permitted.
Q. Witness, could the defense suggest an extraordinary objection?
A. Yes, the defense counsel could do it, too. The contents of such petitions frequently showed that pure clemency reasons were used by them as arguments in favor of an extraordinary objection, and not basic legal questions. In such cases it was suggested to them that they make a clemency plea. But, if the extraordinary objection was based on such grounds that there was a hope that it might succeed, I submitted it to the Minister of Justice and supported it. However, and I have stressed that here before, it was very difficult to get Thierack to allow extraordinary objection to be made in favor of a defendant.
Q. May I interpolate a question? Were you, as chief prosecutor, the competent official who had to deal with such extraordinary objections?
A. No, no, that was the Chief Reich Prosecutor of the Reich Supreme Court at Leipzig.
Q. Can you tell us something as to whether extraordinary objection was made frequently?