I keep thinking of things I wanted to add, but did not think of until the editing window passed -
Making something illegal after the fact is an ex post facto law, which is a violation of Article One of the United States Constitution. That was considered so heinous that it didn't need to get added in via the Bill of Rights. This is the problem I have with the Nuremberg Trials. How can you prosecute someone for crimes against humanity when no law prohibited that particular crime at the time? Murder was against the law, prosecute them for murder. Slavery was against the law, too, prosecute them for slavery. Robbery, rape, burglary, on and on and on. Umpteen felonies. I don't know if Germany had the death sentence, or whether sentences could run consecutively - maybe there's a reason there I don't know about.
Our Founding Fathers knew a lot about how unfair government could be, and they wanted the United States not to be that way.
Which is another reason I am opposed to the International Court for Crimes Against Humanity - let them set it up here and try people according to our legal system - which I think is superior.
Courts in Europe don't have juries, for one thing. They don't have the exclusionary rule, either. They don't have to give Miranda warnings, either. It used to be that the burden was on the guilty to prove himself innocent, but they seem to have learned from us that this was a violation of due process. |
