Justice Ministry to change German law's Nazi definition of murder

[unhappycamper]

http://www.dw.com/en/justice-ministry-to-change-german-laws-nazi-definition-of-murder/a-18620945

Germany's Justice Ministry is determined to correct the definition of murder in the Criminal Code, drawn up by one of the Third Reich's most notorious judges. But conservative parties don't see the point.

Justice Ministry to change German law's Nazi definition of murder
Ben Knight
31.07.2015

German Justice Minister Heiko Maas has some heavy reading for his summer vacation. A commission of law professors, lawyers, and public prosecutors this week filed a 909-page report on reforming the definition and punishment of murder in the German Criminal Code. Maas' aim is to present a bill to the German parliament while he still can - that is, by the end of this legislative period in 2017.

The minister's initiative is an attempt to draw a line under a debate that has bedeviled German jurists for decades - specifically around Paragraph 211 of the Criminal Code, set down in 1941 by Roland Freisler (pictured center above), state secretary in the Justice Ministry under Adolf Hitler, and later president of the notorious People's Court, a special court established by the Nazis to operate outside the constitution.

The paragraph defines a murderer, rather than the crime itself, and rules that he or she is someone who "insidiously and cruelly kills a human being out of bloodlust, to satisfy a sexual appetite, out of avarice, or out of any other low motivation."

Updating murder

This kind of terminology, jurists say, no longer squares with modern criminal law. "The idea behind it is that the individual is already born a murderer," said Christoph Safferling, an Erlangen law professor who sat on the commission. "It's a question of genetics and socialization of the character - the person is a murderer - and that is typical of National Socialism. It's making this distinction between people who belong to the community and those one removes."

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Freisler