Editing Judgment in Berlin

{{Short description|1984 book by Herbert Jay Stern}}
{{Refimprove|date=April 2020}}
{{Infobox book
| author            = [[Herbert Jay Stern]]
| pub_date          = 1984
}}
{{italic title}}
'''''Judgment in Berlin''''' is a 1984 book by [[United States federal judge|federal judge]] [[Herbert Jay Stern]] about a [[aircraft hijacking|hijacking]] trial in the [[United States Court for Berlin]] in 1979, over which he presided.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/fl-xpm-1988-05-25-8802010132-story.html|title='JUDGMENT IN BERLIN' A POWERFUL STATEMENT|last=Writer|first=ROGER HURLBURT, Entertainment|website=Sun-Sentinel.com|date=25 May 1988 |language=en-US|access-date=2020-04-06}}</ref>

From the end of [[World War II]] in Europe in May 1945 until the [[German reunification|reunification]] of Germany in October 1990, [[Berlin]] was divided into four sectors: the American Sector, the French Sector, the British Sector, and the Soviet Sector, each named after the occupying power.  The Soviet sector, informally called [[East Berlin]], was considered by [[East Germany]], then a member of the [[Warsaw Pact]], to be part of its territory and in fact its capital, and the American, French, and British Sectors, collectively called [[West Berlin]], were in some respects governed as if they were a part of [[West Germany]], a member of [[NATO]].  Seldom did the American government exercise power directly in the American sector, except as it affected American military forces stationed in Berlin.  In particular, the judgeship of the United States Court for Berlin was vacant except during the trial over which Judge Stern presided.

In 1978, after prodigious diplomatic efforts, [[NATO]] had convinced the [[Warsaw Pact]] states to sign an international convention on [[aircraft hijacking|hijacking]], in which each signatory state promised to punish hijackers who landed in their territory{{cn|date=October 2021}}.

On 30 August 1978, Hans Detlef Alexander Tiede and Ingrid Ruske, both East Germans, used a [[starting pistol]] (not an actual gun) to hijack a Polish passenger aircraft ([[LOT Polish Airlines Flight 165 hijacking|LOT Polish Airlines Flight 165]]) from [[Gdańsk]] bound for East Berlin's [[Schönefeld Airport]] and diverted it instead to the [[U.S. Air Force]] base at [[Tempelhof International Airport|Tempelhof Airport]] in West Berlin.  The West German government was very reluctant to prosecute Tiede and Ruske because of the West German policy of supporting the right of East Germans to flee oppression in the [[East Germany|GDR]].  However, the NATO members did not want to lose the hijacking treaty on which they had worked for so long.  Consequently, the case was prosecuted in the never-before-convened United States Court for Berlin.

Over the prosecutor's objections, Judge Stern ruled that the defendants were entitled to be [[jury trial|tried by a jury]], a procedure abolished in Germany in 1924. The case against Tiede's co-defendant Ingrid Ruske was dismissed because she had not been notified of her [[Miranda rights]] before signing a confession. The jury found Tiede guilty of [[hostage-taking]], but not guilty of acts against the safety of civil aviation, [[deprivation of liberty]] and [[Battery (crime)|battery]].<ref name="Nawrocki 1979">{{in lang|de}} – {{Cite news|date= 6 January 1979|url = http://www.zeit.de/1979/23/berlin-wollen-sie-solche-richter|title = Joachim Nawrocki, "Berlin: "Wollen Sie solche Richter?"" (trl.: Berlin: "Is this the kind of judges you want?") 11 |newspaper = [[Die Zeit]]| accessdate = 25 July 2009 }}</ref> He was sentenced to time served&nbsp;— about nine months.

A significant subtext in the book is Stern's refusal to accept assertions made by representatives of the [[United States Department of State]] that, as the authority appointing the judge for the United States Court for Berlin, it also had the right to control the judge's decision, i.e., tell Stern what to decide. The "time served" sentence, writes Stern, was the only method by which he could protect Tiede from the [[State Department]]. Not surprisingly, the State Department and the U.S. Mission to Berlin had a different view of the facts and circumstances.<ref>Mark Feldman Oral History at p. 126, https://adst.org/OH%20TOCs/Feldman.Mark.pdf</ref>

In 1988, Stern's book was used as the basis for a [[Judgment in Berlin (film)|film of the same name]] that starred [[Martin Sheen]] as Judge Stern, [[Harris Yulin]] as Bruno Ristau, and [[Sean Penn]] as Witness X.
== See also ==
*[[Judgment in Berlin (film)]] (1988)

==References==
{{Reflist}}

{{Berlin Wall}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Judgment In Berlin}}
[[Category:1984 non-fiction books]]
[[Category:Non-fiction books about crime]]
[[Category:Aircraft hijackings]]
[[Category:Legal history of Germany]]
[[Category:Novels set in Berlin]]