Warren Magee

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Warren Magee (born April 27, 1908 in Washington, DC , † February 25, 2000 in Tampa , Florida ) was an American lawyer. He was one of three non-German defense lawyers at the Nuremberg follow -up trials , and then tried in Washington DC as an attorney for the last seven people sentenced to death in Nazi trials to prevent their execution.

Life

Warren E. Magee spent most of his life in Washington DC, where he grew up and attended university. In 1929 he completed his law studies there at the Washington College of Law , now the Law School of the American University in Washington DC. In 1930 he was admitted to the District of Columbia after passing a bar examination as a practicing attorney. Magee worked for the Justice Department for a time, and then spent the next fifteen years as a lawyer in Washington, DC without further public notice, even though he was representing a congressman who was involved in a scandal.

Magee came in 1947 with the Nuremberg trials in contact: In the Wilhelmstrasse trial , he was by Hellmut Becker , of the defense of the accused Ernst von Weizsacker "very professionally organized and shiny" conducted, proposed as the second defense of Weizsacker, and on December 29, Approved by the court in 1947. Warren Magee was the only non-German defense attorney in the proceedings. The money for hiring an American lawyer - not an easy task in war-torn Germany before the currency reform - was brought up by Weizsäcker's friends and supporters from abroad. a. the industrialist Robert Boehringer from Switzerland. Weizsäcker was sentenced to five years in April 1949, but was released from the Landsberg War Crimes Prison in October 1950 . Magee received a papal gold medal from Pius XII for his work as defender of Weizsäcker . , who knew and valued Weizsäcker from his time as ambassador to the Holy See .

In the course of the intensified discussion of West German rearmament after the outbreak of the Korean War from the summer of 1950, High Commissioner John McCloy converted the death penalty into imprisonment for 10 of the 15 execution candidates from the Nuremberg follow-up trials on January 31, 1951 . On the recommendation of the Advisory Board on Clemency for War Criminals , only five convicts from the Nuremberg follow-up trials were to be executed: Oswald Pohl , convicted in the Pohl trial, and Otto Ohlendorf , Paul Blobel , Werner Braune and Erich Naumann , all four convicted in the Einsatzgruppen Process . General Thomas T. Handy had to decide over 13 still living execution candidates from the Dachau trials , and only passed the two death sentences against Georg Schallermair and Hans Schmidt . Schallermair was the report leader of the guards in the Mühldorf concentration camp external command , Schmidt was adjutant to the camp commandant of Buchenwald concentration camp . There were now seven execution candidates ("red jackets") in the Landsberg war crimes prison, and the last possibilities for appeals for clemency from the American authorities in Germany were exhausted.

On Hellmut Becker's mediation, Magee now represented the seven execution candidates in Washington DC. Magee reached after consultation with Perlman a habeas corpus petition in the District Court in Columbia one. He also submitted the same application to the competent court of appeal . Both courts rejected the application, just as they had previously rejected all habeas corpus applications from convicts from the Nuremberg and Dachau trials. For the first time, however, the appellate court allowed recourse to the Supreme Court . This resulted in a freeze of executions on February 15, 1951. In coordination with Hans Gawlik , head of the Central Legal Protection Office in the Federal Ministry of Justice, Magee submitted appeals for clemency to President Truman and a complaint to the Supreme Court. Magee received 50,000 DM from the federal government for these efforts. After these attempts were unsuccessful, a new execution date was set for May 24, 1951, which was postponed again at the last minute after Magee submitted new habeas corpus applications to the district court in Columbia would have. On May 26, 1951, Magee requested the sending of about 610,000 signatures collected in Germany under a grace petition , the original of which he presented to the White House . On June 6, 1951, all legal remedies were finally exhausted after the Supreme Court had once again ruled negative. (Compare also the fundamental decision of the Supreme Court of 1950 Johnson v. Eisentrager .) The last seven Nazi criminals sentenced to death were hanged in Landsberg in the morning hours of June 7, 1951.

In 1952, Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy sued his Senate Democratic adversary, William Benton , for $ 2 million in damages for defamation and defamation. Benton had called McCarthy a liar and called for his Senate expulsion . Magee accepted McCarthy's mandate, but the lawsuit never came to trial.

Magee lived at the end of his life in Bethesda, not far from Washington DC. His second home for the winter was in Tampa, where he died of cancer .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Warren Magee , US Social Security Death Directory (SSDI), accessed July 25, 2016
  2. ↑ More than 200 defense lawyers were admitted to the twelve follow-up lawsuits in Nuremberg: as principal defense counsel , as associate defense counsel and as assistant defense counsel . Three of the more than 200 lawyers were not Germans, including one Swiss and two American.
    Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal Nuremberg, November 14, 1945 - October 1, 1946 , Vol. XV. Nuremberg 1947, p. 302. (Volume 15 of the " Blue Series ")
  3. ↑ Outsider Lawyer Warren Magee Dies at 91 . In: "Washington Post" of March 23, 2000.
  4. ↑ a b Obituary: Warren Magee . In: "The Economist" from April 1, 2000.
  5. ↑ Dirk Pöppmann: Robert Kempner and Ernst von Weizsäcker in the Wilhelmstrasse trial . In: Irmtrud Wojak , Susanne Meinl : “In the labyrinth of guilt”. Frankfurt a. M. 2003, ISBN 3-593-37373-4 , p. 176.
  6. ^ Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals Under Control Council Law No. 10 , Vol. XII: United States of America vs. Ernst von Weizsaecker, et al. (Case 11: "Ministries Case"). United States Government Printing Office , District of Columbia 1950, p. 66.
  7. ^ Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals Under Control Council Law No. 10 , Vol. XII: United States of America vs. Ernst von Weizsaecker, et al. (Case 11: "Ministries Case"). US Government Printing Office, District of Columbia 1950, p. 12.
  8. ↑ Norbert Frei: Politics of the Past . Beck, Munich 1996, p. 179.
  9. ↑ a b Adam Bernstein: Outsider Lawyer Warren Magee Dies at 91 . In: "Washington Post" of March 23, 2000.
  10. ↑ Norbert Frei: Politics of the Past . Beck, Munich 1996, p. 219.
  11. ↑ Norbert Frei: Politics of the Past . Beck, Munich 1996, pp. 222-223.
  12. ↑ You may be guilty . In: Der Spiegel No. 9/1951 of February 28, 1951.
  13. ↑ Norbert Frei: Politics of the Past . Beck, Munich 1996, p. 229.
  14. ↑ a b Norbert Frei: Politics of the Past . Beck, Munich 1996, p. 231.
  15. ↑ Mr. Brit has arrived . In: Der Spiegel No. 24/1951 of June 13, 1951.
  16. ↑ Johnson v. Eisentrager at Findlaw
personal data
SURNAME Magee, Warren
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Magee, Warren E.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH April 27, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Washington, DC
DATE OF DEATH February 25, 2000
Place of death Tampa , Florida