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 The

Volume XXI

Green

Bag

September, 1909

Number 9

Death Sentences in Germany By H. Becker, Dr. juris

NOT so long ago that the details of the case should not readily be re called to mind, Prof. Carl Hau, formerly of Washington, D. C, then under sen tence of death for the murder of his mother-in-law, Mrs. Molitor, was await ing in the court jail of Karlsruhe, the capital of Baden, Germany, the final disposition of his case, after all efforts to have his judgment reversed by the highest tribunal, the Reichsgericht at Leipzig, had proved futile. Just at this juncture, so critical for the convicted man, the old Grand Duke of Baden died. His well-known reputation as a con firmed opponent of death punishment had made it a virtual certainty that the bloody act would not have to be ex piated on the executioner's block, while the opinions held in this regard by his son and successor were entirely unknown, and did not permit any assured inferences on a decision which meant life or death for the lonesome prisoner, separated by the expanse of oceans and continents from all that was dear to him. Under such circumstances there was caused, according to repeated utterances of the Washington press, considerable concern among those interested in Hau's fate, and it was certainly with a sigh of pro found relief that the press dispatch from

Karlsruhe was welcomed of the death sentence being commuted to life im prisonment, which, by the way, Hau is serving now in the penitentiary at Bruchsal. However, in point of fact, his life has never, for a moment, been in actual danger of coming to such an untimely and ignominious termination, it being accepted in Germany as a governing principle, prevailing in all the single states forming the Empire, that no sen tence of death is ever put into execu tion if the records do not include an unequivocal, unreserved confession by the convicted. As may readily be sur mised, such surprising consensus of opin ion in so many exalted personages, lead ing to the acceptance of the same practice, must have been occasioned by events of more than passing significance. It hap pened at Berlin in the year 1856, that a certain Thomas, by profession a forester in private employ, but for years out of work, was accused of highway robbery and brutal murder. Though professing with great violence his complete inno cence, he was convicted on seemingly overwhelming circumstantial evidence, with a very dark past asserting itself strongly in his disfavor. Sentence of death was pronounced, and was, after