| The noise in the Court is so intense, I can't even hear on the headset, Your Honor. And it is continuing even as I speak to you, with no control in the courtroom. |
A court that allows hissing and booing. Subsequent to my writing of the letter below to Yitzhak Arad, I noted the following additional reference to audience disruption of the defense during the course of Arad's testimony on 18-19Feb87. Perhaps this is our strongest piece of evidence that the judges were allowing the audience to disrupt and intimidate the defense, as defense counsel O'Connor makes reference to "hissing" and "booing," and judge Levin does not object to this depiction of audience behavior:
Whose ellipsis was that? One has no way of knowing whether the ellipsis in "as if this is a body ... and not something" is indicative of O'Connor's failing to complete his own statement, or rather is indicative of the translator's preferring not to repeat O'Connor's negative depiction of the Israeli court. Aspiring to Western standards of justice. In any court aspiring to Western standards of justice, the three judges presiding over the Demjanjuk case would have taken action on their own initiative to stop the hissing and the booing, and would not have waited for O'Connor to complain of it first. In any court aspiring to Western standards of justice, furthermore, the judges would have made their admonition stick, instead of permitting the audience disruption to continue as they did, as is evidenced by O'Connor complaining two more times during the course of Arad's testimony, as can be found documented in the letter below (see the excerpts from pp. 591 and 617). Judge Levin above can be seen to admonish the audience ineffectively. (1) Judge Levin weakens his admonition by reminding the audience that it is being made at O'Connor's behest ("the defense counsel is complaining about the noise"), whereas the admonition would have been stronger if it had been depicted as being a requirement of the court. (2) The admonition is depicted as a "request" and as an "earnest request" whereas it should have been depicted as a demand or an order. (3) Judge Levin cautions that a failure of the audience to comply will necessitate the adoption of "other measures," but does not indicate what these are, and even as the disruption continues, never adopts any other measures. In other words, judge Levin, along with the other two judges sitting on the Demjanjuk case, is fully aware of the audience hissing and booing, has already heard several complaints of it from defense counsel, has already issued several weak rebukes which the audience has ignored, and in issuing his limp warning this time, and in failing to take decisive action, signals his intention to allow the hissing and booing to continue.
Yad Vashem PO Box 3477 91034 Jerusalem Israel Yitzhak Arad: It would appear that your February 1987 testimony in the Jerusalem trial of John Demjanjuk for being Ivan the Terrible of Treblinka was accompanied by noise from the audience, much of it possibly disruptive outbursts directed against the Demjanjuk defense. For example, we see in the court transcript Judge Dov Levin making attempts to establish control over the audience, and we see that it appears to be the defense counsel in particular whose work the audience is interfering with:
Even though this is not a regular courtroom, but a spacious auditorium hired especially for the Demjanjuk trial, it is so packed that members of this disruptive audience are being allowed to stand along the walls:
We observe next that defense attorney Mark O'Connor is the one to object to the noise, with Judge Levin passing along a more abbreviated admonition to the audience, and with the threat of removing audience members from the hall no longer repeated:
After that, although the audience does not appear to have quieted down, Judge Levin's admonition becomes briefer still:
Finally, it is defense attorney O'Connor alone who objects, with heightened emphasis in his second statement below, but with Judge Levin failing to address any further admonitions to the audience:
The impression created by the above excerpts from the court transcript is that the three judges abandoned attempts to control the audience, and that the audience was allowed to continue being noisy and disruptive without further objection from the court. In connection with the above, I wonder if you would be able to answer the following six questions: (1) Would you be able to confirm the impression created by the court transcript that the atmosphere of the courtroom was unprofessional, disruptive, and intimidating to the defense? (2) Would it be fair to conclude that the reason that the prosecution did not complain of noise was that the audience became disruptive only during the work of the defense? (3) Would you agree that the three judges made only perfunctory attempts to impose order in their court? (4) Based on your experience testifying in trials around the world, would you say that such disruption from the audience is allowed in other countries, or only in Israel? (5) Based on your experience testifying in other trials in Israel, would you say that such disruption from the audience is allowed in other Israeli trials, or was allowed only in the trial of John Demjanjuk? (6) If you did feel that audience unruliness was prejudicial to the defense, or perhaps that it reflected poorly on Israeli justice, can you bring to my attention any statement that you made following your testimony protesting such unruliness? Lubomyr Prytulak HOME DISINFORMATION PEOPLE ARAD |