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>Germany (the Nazis) IIRC this actually happened, albeit on an individual basis: When prosecuting communists in the 50s and 60s in Western Germany, some judges

by Kristine1975 10y ago

>Germany (the Nazis) IIRC this actually happened, albeit on an individual basis: When prosecuting communists in the 50s and 60s in Western Germany, some judges considered the defendant to be a repeat-offender if they had been convicted of being a communist in the Third Reich. Yes, the judges were former Nazis. Edit: Source (German, I'm afraid): http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/14/14361/1.html http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/14/14361/1.html

pluma 10y ago
To be fair, while Nazi Germany wasn't exactly democratic and there was a lot of politics in how laws were applied, being a communist activist was illegal both under Nazi German law as well as under West German law (in the 50s and 60s anyway). The reasoning was less that someone had been convicted "earlier in this country" but that they had been convicted before at all, indicating they've literally done the same thing before and gotten punished for it. If you buy into the logic that repeat offences constitute a more severe crime, it's sensible to take prior offences into account even if they were persecuted under a different jurisdiction. Of course the idea that "resistance against the state" under the Nazi regime could serve as a prior offence seems ludicrous but let's not pretend the persecution of communists during the Cold War was fairer than the persecution of political undesirables before (though the punishment was obviously different).
- Kristine1975 10y ago
  >If you buy into the logic that repeat offences constitute a more severe crime, it's sensible to take prior offences into account even if they were persecuted under a different jurisdiction. But Nazi Germany wasn't a state under the rule of law, so it's questionable whether someone convicted by one of its courts was really guilty of the crime they were accused of. I.e. the different jurisdiction wasn't trustworthy, so its verdict should have been ignored.

pluma 10y ago

To be fair, while Nazi Germany wasn't exactly democratic and there was a lot of politics in how laws were applied, being a communist activist was illegal both under Nazi German law as well as under West German law (in the 50s and 60s anyway). The reasoning was less that someone had been convicted "earlier in this country" but that they had been convicted before at all, indicating they've literally done the same thing before and gotten punished for it. If you buy into the logic that repeat offences constitute a more severe crime, it's sensible to take prior offences into account even if they were persecuted under a different jurisdiction. Of course the idea that "resistance against the state" under the Nazi regime could serve as a prior offence seems ludicrous but let's not pretend the persecution of communists during the Cold War was fairer than the persecution of political undesirables before (though the punishment was obviously different).

Kristine1975 10y ago
>If you buy into the logic that repeat offences constitute a more severe crime, it's sensible to take prior offences into account even if they were persecuted under a different jurisdiction. But Nazi Germany wasn't a state under the rule of law, so it's questionable whether someone convicted by one of its courts was really guilty of the crime they were accused of. I.e. the different jurisdiction wasn't trustworthy, so its verdict should have been ignored.