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What is justice, now?

When do we say "justice on Earth" will never be served, and we move on? Alleged Nazi camp guard John Demjanjuk was formally charged Monday with being an accessory to about 27,900 murders during World War II, according to CNN. In a case like this, should he be tried for each and every one, or do we accept one conviction that puts him behind bars the rest of his life as enough?

It will never be the same as what those in the Nazi camp endured.

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Posted by nmclaughlin on Monday, July 13, 2009 at 10:00 am

What do you think?

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Andrew Brod

July 13, 2009 - 11:28 am EDT

This is an odd question to ask. Even if authorities had caught Demjanjuk minutes after fleeing Sobibor and summarily executed him in full view of the camp, his punishment would still have been minimal compared to what was suffered by those in the camp. If that's your criterion for justice, then you've set an impossibly high bar for society.

More specifically, your question seems to suggest that perhaps there should be a de facto statute of limitations for those who commit war crimes and atrocities. This is also odd. As it happens, not one of the 50 states has a statute of limitations for first-degree murder. And many jurisdictions spend taxpayer money trying to solve cold cases, i.e. those that have been unsolved for years. One might see serving as a guard in a Nazi death camp as being at least as serious a crime, and at least as deserving of prosecution. But maybe that's just me.

nmclaughlin

July 13, 2009 - 11:58 am EDT

(I should have done a better job of phrasing that question)

What I'm wondering is if he is tried for one of the murders and is convicted and will be in jail the rest of his life anyway, should he be tried for each of the others? If he is convicted, I don't feel that he should ever be released. But at what point do we have justice in a case like this?

Andrew Brod

July 13, 2009 - 12:28 pm EDT

Well, you're right--that's a different question. Never mind!

nemo0037

July 13, 2009 - 1:17 pm EDT

It seems obvious that the term "justice" needs to be a more complex undertaking than simple "eye for an eye" retribution. If the man is guilty of participating in the Holocaust process, it's obviously impossible to exact that sort of "justice."

But you CAN make a social statement that makes a difference by putting him in prison. That there is no time frame for limiting punishment for certain crimes. That obeying an order to participate in a crime against humanity is not a valid defense. And that so long as there are people who have suffered such crimes, society is willing to give them the comfort of telling their story for all to hear.

It's sad that these principles are not supported universally yet. But one can hope for the future.

Andrew Brod

July 13, 2009 - 6:27 pm EDT

I'd argue that the "eye for an eye" passage in Exodus 21 is more complex than is usually understood. The rabbis of the Talmud taught that it wasn't to be taken literally. No courts were going around extracting body parts as retribution. Instead, the passage lays out the principle of proportionate justice, which often meant an amount of property deemed to be equal in value to that which was damaged. In fact, in antiquity retribution often was quite extreme, and so we could view this as a limitation on damages. Of course, reckoning how much an eye or a tooth is worth is no easy exercise, but that's a challenge we face in modern law as well.

So if the "eye for an eye" teaching is really about what's proportionate, what does that imply here? The judge in the Madoff case gave the Ponzi schemer 150 years, even though one could argue that sentencing a 70-year-old to anything more than 15 or 20 years is overkill. But the judge reminded us that sentences send signals: they communicate society's disgust and deter future such actions. Well, there is certainly much disgust to communicate regarding the Holocaust. A more interesting question is whether deterrence is an issue. Perhaps the near uniqueness of the Holocaust calls for more than just a single murder trial for Demjanjuk. But I'd be inclined to think that proportionateness might also imply not spending too much of the taxpayer's money to send signals.