David W. Peck

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David W. Peck (born December 3, 1902 , † August 23, 1990 in New York City ) was an American lawyer. From 1947 to 1957 he was the presiding judge of the Court of Appeal in the 1st District of the Supreme Court, New York State , during which time he played a leading role in reforming the state's judiciary . 1950 led Peck in Germany, the Advisory Board on Clemency (dt .: Advisory Board for clemency petitions ), the recommendations on the pardon of convicted war - and Nazi criminals developed.

life and work

David Warner Peck grew up in the small town of Crawfordsville , Indiana . Crawfordsville is the administrative seat of Montgomery County and is home to Wabash College , a small private college that admits only male students . Peck skipped the twelfth year ( senior year ) of his high school and began studying at Wabash College at the age of 16, which he graduated with honors after three years (instead of the usual four). He then studied law at the renowned Harvard Law School . He financed this course through his work as a tutor .

After graduating and bar exam in New York State , Peck joined the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, with which he remained lifelong. In 1934, at the age of 31, he became a partner at Sullivan & Cromwell and was responsible for civil litigation . Peck was a Republican and belonged to the so-called " Young Turks " of the Republican Party in County New York in the early 1930s, along with Thomas E. Dewey and Herbert Brownell .

In 1943 Peck was appointed judge on the Supreme Court of New York . The state-level Supreme Court is roughly comparable to the German Higher Regional Court in its position in the American legal system . Peck was appointed presiding judge of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court ( appellate body) of the 1st District in 1947 and was thus responsible for the judicial districts of Manhattan and Bronx . Peck was 44 years old when he was called, making it the youngest judge of this rank in New York State to date. In 1957, Peck resigned from the judiciary and returned to Sullivan & Cromwell as a senior partner, where he remained until retirement in 1980.

In 1955 Peck wrote the book The Greer Case on the case of Mabel Seymour Greer, who died in 1946, with which he himself was a judge. Shortly before her death, Mrs. Greer admitted the existence of a son whom she had given up for adoption after birth. The otherwise childless woman bequeathed all of her considerable fortune to Harvard University in her will . Her alleged son challenged the will. The book became a bestseller with more than eight editions, including a. by Penguin and as Reader's Digest Edition , and filmed in 1957 as an episode of the CBS series Playhouse 90 .

"Peck Panel"

The US High Commissioner in Germany , John McCloy convened in March 1950, the Advisory Board on Clemency (dt .: Advisory Board for clemency petitions , according to its chairman soon generally Peck panel called) as an independent expert panel recommendations to prison of convicted by US military courts of war and NS -Criminal should pronounce. The panel included, in addition Peck as chairman two more members: Frederick A. Moran, chairman of the New York Board of Parole (Commission for a decision on granting parole ) and Brigadier General Conrad E. Snow, Legal Adviser at the State Department. The legal status of the Peck Panel was not fully clarified: it should neither be a court of appeal , because the judgments on the legal basis of Control Council Act No. 10 did not provide for a review body, nor was the pure exercise of the right of grace , which was more personal Circumstances of the convict matters. In practice, the peck panel had appeals and mercy board features. Since the Peck Panel considered the appeals for clemency from the convicted and the exonerating pleadings of their defense attorneys, but did not hear the prosecution again, a softening of the judgments was already structurally designed.

The Peck Panel ruled on the pardon requests from 99 convicts, all of whom were in the Landsberg War Crimes Prison . The Peck Panel made its recommendations on August 28, 1950. In 77 of the 99 cases, the panel recommended a reduction in the sentence; seven of the 15 death sentences were to be commuted to prison terms. The Peck Panel made recommendations for the following convicts from the Nuremberg follow-up trials, among others :

American High Commissioner John McCloy, who had to make the final decision, disagreed with the Peck Panel's recommendations in a number of cases. In particular, his legal advisor and close confidante, Robert R. Bowie , advised not to give the convicted generals preferential treatment. McCloy finally announced his decision on January 31, 1951. In a number of cases this deviated from the recommendation of the Peck Panel, and was sometimes more stringent and sometimes less strict. Only five death sentences from the NMT judgments should therefore be carried out.

Publications

  • The Greer Case, a true court drama . Simon and Schuster, New York 1955.
  • Decision at law . Dodd, Mead & Company, New York 1961.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Joan Cook: David W. Peck, 87, Former Justice And Court Reformer in New York . In: "New York Times" of August 24, 1990.
  2. ^ A b New York State Bar Bulletin , Vol. 30. New York State Bar Association, New York 1958, p. 32.
  3. ↑ Mrs. Green's Secret . In: "Time Magazine" of December 2, 1946. ("Green / Greer" is a misprint in Time Magazine)
  4. ^ A b Earl: The Nuremberg SS-Einsatzgruppen Trial . Cambridge 2009, pp. 280–285, in particular "Table 9 - Recommendations of the Advisory Board on Clemency (Peck Panel), August 28, 1950".
  5. ^ A b c d Thomas Alan Schwartz: John McCloy and the Landsberg Cases . In: Jeffry M. Diefendorf (Ed.): "American Policy and the Reconstruction of West Germany, 1945–1955". Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1993, ISBN 0-521-43120-4 , pp. 442-449.
  6. ^ A b McCloy: "No general amnesty" . In: "Hamburger Abendblatt", No. 217 of September 16, 1950, p. 8.
personal data
SURNAME Peck, David W.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Peck, David Warner
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH December 3, 1902
DATE OF DEATH 23rd August 1990
Place of death New York City