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Appellate Review of Judicial Fact-Finding Processes and Decisions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2014

Heike Jung
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Extract

At first glance, appellate control of judicial fact-finding appears to be a precise and nicely circumscribed topic. This impression is grossly deceiving. To begin with, in a comparative context, it is inevitable to hint at the underlying structural features of the German criminal procedure, since appellate control is not a free-floating self-explanatory element of the criminal justice system, but built upon a particular procedural structure. Secondly, the control of fact-finding by the appeal court forms only a small and perhaps even the least important phase of the fact-finding process. Therefore it needs to be located within the larger perspective of the procedural fact-finding process as a whole. Thirdly, it goes without saying that the control process by way of appellate review is largely shaped by the different legal instruments of control. Knowledge of their operation and legal scope with particular emphasis on the fact-finding process cannot be taken for granted, even given an all-German audience.

Fourthly, the appellate control of judicial fact-finding cannot be understood by way of abstract description only: such a description needs to be underpinned by examples. This puts me in a predicament, since the pertinent standards developed by the appellate control amount to no less than an aggregate of the German law of evidence. Hence I have to restrict myself to a few paradigmatic examples hoping that they will reveal the structural pattern if there is one.

Type
Research Article
Information
Israel Law Review , Volume 31 , Issue 1-3 , Winter-Summer 1997 , pp. 690 - 701
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and The Faculty of Law, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 1997

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Footnotes

*

Professor of Law, University of the Saarland, Saarbrücken.

References

1 For a comparison of both models cf. Goldstein, , “Reflections on Two Models: Inquisitorial Schemes in American Criminal Procedure” (1974) 26 Stan. L.R. 1009 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Herrmann, , “Various Models of Criminal Proceeedings”, (1978) South African J. of Criminal L. and Crimin. 3 Google Scholar; Nijboer, , “Common Law Tradition in Evidence Scholarship Observed from a Continental Perspective”, (1993) 41 Am. J. Comp. L. 299 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Doran, Jackson and Seigel, , “Rethinking Adversariness in Nonjury Criminal Trials”, (1995) 43 Am. J. Crim. L. 1, at 13 Google Scholar.

2 Cf. BGHSt 14, 358 (365).

3 For a more detailed discussion of the origin and the scope of the principle cf. Meurer, , “Beweiserhebung und Beweiswürdigung”, in Gedächtnisschrift für Hilde Kaufmann (Berlin, 1986) 947 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jerouschek, , Wie frei ist die freie Beweiswürdigung (Goltdammer's Archiv, 1992) 493 Google Scholar.

4 Cf. Doran, Jackson and Seigel, supra n. 1, at 48: “… the jury's verdict per se offers no insight into the process of decision-making of the fact-finder”.

5 Cf. my overview, “The Victim in the Criminal Justice System”, in Miyazawa, and Ohya, , eds., Victimology in Comparative Perspective (Tokyo, 1986) 349 Google Scholar.

6 For a comparison e.g., Perron, , ed., Die Beweisaufnahme im Strafverfahrensrecht des Auslands (Freiburg, 1995)Google Scholar; Spencer, , “La preuve” in Delmas-Marty, , ed., Procédures pénales d'Europe (Paris, 1995) 512 Google Scholar.

7 Linell, P. and Jonssen, L., “Suspect Stories: On Perspective Setting in an Asymmetrical Situation”. Paper presented at the Conference on Dialogical and Contextual Dominance (Bad Homburg, 23–25 Nov. 1989)Google Scholar.

8 Cf. Jung, , “Le ministère public: portrait d'une institution”, (1993) Archives de politique criminelle 15, at 24 Google Scholar.

9 BGHSt 38, 372.

10 Luhmann, , Legitimation durch Verfahren (Frankfurt a.M., 2nd ed., 1975) 114 s., 121 Google Scholar.

11 Commission Justice Pénale et Droits de l'homme, La mise en état des affaires pénales (Paris, 1991) 13 Google Scholar.

12 Bundesverfassungsgericht, dec. of Aug. 31st, 1993; 2 BvR 843/93.

13 Schenk, Series A No. 140; Huvig, Series A No. 164; Kruslin, Series A No. 167.

14 BGH, NJW 1993, 2881.

15 Cf. for details BGH, StV 1992, 235; StV 1992, 261; StV 1991, 409.

16 BGH, StV 1991, 452; StV 1992, 97.

17 Cf. BGH, StV 1992, 261.

18 BGH, StV 1992, 148.

19 BGH, NStZ 1992, 506.

20 Cf. OLG Saarbrücken, June 24, 1993 — Ss 9/93; also BGH, StV 1991, 548.

21 BGH, NJW 1995, 2997.

22 BGH, NStZ 1992, 448.

23 Cf. Herrmann, , “The Independence of the Judge in the Federal Republic of Germany”, in Contemporary Problems in Criminal Justice, (Tokyo, 1983) 75 sGoogle Scholar.

24 E.g., Twining, , Rethinking Evidence (Oxford, 1990)Google Scholar as well as issue no. 23 (1996) of the French legal periodical Droit consecrated to “La Preuve”.

25 Cf. Spencer, supra n. 6.