Summa Iniuria: A Pitaval of Errors of Justice

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Summa Iniuria: Ein Pitaval der Justizirrtäne (Subtitle: Five Hundred Cases of Human Failure in the Field of Jurisprudence from a Criminal and Social Psychological Perspective ), published in Basel in 1976 , is the most extensive and, along with Schiller as a doctor, the most important work by Hans Martin Sutermeister , and “provides represents one of the most detailed documentations on misjudgments in the German language ”.

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The Pitaval is based on Sutermeister's experience as an employee in the Swiss office against official and association arbitrariness (where he had advocated revisions of various murder trials) and treats the misjudgment in terms of cultural history based on Max Hirschberg's main sources of error in finding the law. Sutermeister regarded his book as a kind of “continuation and addition” to Bernt Engelmann's Germany Report . It also represents a kind of settlement with Erik Undritz and Pierre Hegg , who were involved in the Jaccoud affair in forensic medicine , who had previously tried Sutermeister for certain allegations in the same affair, and whom Sutermeister now mentions negatively throughout the book.

Sutermeister opens his book with the chapter Splendor and Misery of Expertise (pp. 35–124), which covers the cases Michael Servetus , Marcel Elcy , Balleydier-Truffet , Jean Calas , Jean Paul Sirven , Jean-François Lefèbvre, chevalier de la Barre and Thomas Arthur de Lally-Tollendal grazes; Most of the cases serve to attack the “Calvinist morality” in Geneva, which, according to Sutermeister, led to the misjudgments of Maria Popescu (pp. 40–47, chapter with the subtitle “the absent-minded professor”; the coroner François Naville is meant) and Pierre Jaccoud (pp. 47–124, chapter with the subtitle “the affair that wasn't”) is said to have led. Other cases that are briefly mentioned in this section are the cases of Boricky-Guédj, Josette Bauer , Paul Stauffer , village pastor Edalji, Pierre Leroy and Jean Fauvel .

Most of the book (pp. 124–707) is entitled Zur Genealogie des Justizirrtums: The Hirschberg Test . Sutermeister divides it according to the six most important "causes of wrongful judgments in the criminal justice system" from Max Hirschberg's book The wrong judgment in criminal proceedings (1960), but in a different order, and added three further "causes of wrongful judgments in the criminal justice system": Single-track preliminary investigation , suggestibility and emotional logic of the jury / psychological errors of the judges , and wrong decisions in the area of ​​"public morality" .

The tenth part of his “Hirschberg Test” is entitled Law and Ethics: Jesus, Socrates and Marx , Sutermeister discusses the cases of Frank Geerk (blasphemy) and Jacques Isorni (who was accused in 1974 for his book The True Trial of Jesus ). The eleventh and final part of the “Hirschberg Test” is entitled The Law and the Advances in the Humanities and Natural Sciences and deals with the cases of Galileo, Bruno, Darwin, Freud, Teilhard de Chardin, Marx, Dante, Scopes and Kinsey.

This main part (the “Hirschberg test”) is followed by conclusions of legal philosophy and practical reform proposals with special consideration of German and Swiss legal systems (pp. 707–726). In the summary (pp. 727–747; on this the supplement "Law on the establishment of a Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalpolizeiamt). Of March 8, 1951. in the version of June 29, 1973") Sutermeister looks up the institutionalization of a Federal Criminal Police Office for Switzerland the example of the German Federal Criminal Police Office , which has not yet been implemented. The appendix (pp. 748–799) contains the individual references, some of which contain detailed comments on other cases, including Sutermeister's case against Pierre Hegg, who sought a libel trial against him in 1960.

reception

Sutermeister's activism as a “hunter of false judgment” was both praised and censured earlier. In Summa Iniuria , the wrong decisions in the area of ​​“public morals” in particular were criticized by Klaus Volk , Wolfgang Lorenz and Otto Scrinzi because of its confused political content. It is characteristic of the book that Sutermeister also includes cases "in which he assumes that the judgment is incorrect without a judicial change in the judgment" and therefore in some cases "consciously takes the subjective standpoint of the defense attorney".

For the criminal law expert Karl Peters , Summa Iniuria has "an important place" in the series of works on legal errors by Erich Sello , Max Alsberg , Albert Hellwig , Hirschberg , Judex and Peters himself. For Karl Peters it is astonishing how Sutermeister, in his Summa Iniuria, “masters the material dealt with in international literature and how he can convincingly supplement it with his own material from Switzerland and Germany. Major criminal cases are presented in an engaging way. The author is not interested in a sensation, but a factual discussion. ”Among other things, due to Summa Iniuria , Karl Peters named Sutermeister, together with Frank Arnau and Günter Weigand , a“ bitter fighter for the law ”.

output

  • Summa Iniuria - A pitaval of errors of justice: five hundred cases of human error in the area of ​​justice from a criminal and social psychological point of view. Basel: Elfenau, 1976 (810 pages), ISBN 978-3-226-00096-2 ; The digitized version has been accessible online via e-Helveticat Access from the Swiss National Library since 2011 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans Martin Sutermeister. Summa Iniuria: A Pitaval of Errors of Justice. Basel: Elfenau, 1976, p. 1.
  2. ↑ Gwladys Gilliéron . Warrant proceedings and plea bargaining as sources of wrongful convictions. Zurich: Schulthess Legal Media , 2010, p. 15. ISBN 978-3-7255-6021-9
  3. ↑ Hans Martin Sutermeister. Summa Iniuria: A Pitaval of Errors of Justice. Basel: Elfenau, 1976, pp. 23-24.
  4. ↑ cf. Max Hirschberg . The Wrong Judgment in Criminal Procedure: On the Pathology of Jurisprudence. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer Verlag , 1960.
  5. ↑ Hans Martin Sutermeister. Summa Iniuria: A Pitaval of Errors of Justice. Basel: Elfenau, 1976, p. 26.
  6. ↑ cf. Gerhard Mauz. A murder, a button, and Calvin's ghost. In: Der Spiegel , 1965, No. 14, p. 119.
  7. ↑ For example by Gerhard Mauz in his article Guilty because we have no one else: SPIEGEL reporter Gerhard Mauz on the misjudgment hunters Hans Martin Sutermeister and Gustav Adolf Neumann. (In: Der Spiegel , 1965, No. 18, pp. 116 and 118.)
  8. ↑ For example by Jürgen Thorwald in: Bloody Secret. Knaur , Munich / Zurich 1966, pp. 257-258 ( The hour of the detectives. Becoming and worlds of criminalistics. Volume 1).
  9. ↑ Klaus Volk . Book review: Sutermeister, HM. Summa Iniuria. In: Monthly for criminology and criminal law reform . Volume 60, 1977, p. 388.
  10. ↑ a b Wolfgang Lorenz . Sutermeister, Hans M .: Summa Iniuria. A pitaval of legal errors - Basel (Elfenau-Verlag) 1976 - 810 pp. Br. In: Archives for Criminology . Volume 160, Issue 3/4, 1977.
  11. ↑ Otto Scrinzi . Book in Focus: Inevitable Errors of Justice. In: Ärztliche Praxis: The doctor's newspaper in clinic and practice . 1976/1977.
  12. ↑ a b c Karl Peters . Sutermeister, Hans M .: Summa Iniuria. A pitaval of errors of justice. Basel 1976. In: Journal for the entire criminal law science . Volume 26, Volume 88, Issue 1, 1976, pp. 993-995, doi : 10.1515 / zstw.1976.88.4.978 ).
  13. ↑ Karl Peters: “XIII. Combative “ In: Justice as fate: a plea for the other side . De Gruyter , 1979. Page 192. ISBN 9782010057120