The first case in West Germany involving application of the statute of limitations for manslaughter was suspended in Schweinfurt today, when the jury found itself in a legal tangle and found itself unable to try the defendant.
The case involved Gerhard Schlosser, 51, who was a Nazi policeman in the Czenstochow Ghetto in occupied Poland, charged with the 1942 murder of Harry Mittler, a Jewish medical assistant in the ghetto. Schlosser had been tried four times previously for war crimes in the ghetto. In the fourth trial, he was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of Mittler, but the judgment was set aside by the Bundesgerichthaus, the highest West German court, on juridical grounds, and a new trial ordered.
The court held the crime to be manslaughter and not murder because the prosecution was unable to prove that Schlosser had killed Mittler because of “race hatred.” The statute of limitations for manslaughter became effective five years ago without opposition. The jury members decided they were unable to try Schlosser.
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