Turning the pages back... March 22, 1998 (03/19/00)

Turning the pages back...

March 22, 1998

Two years ago on March 22, The Ukrainian Weekly carried an editorial about the latest developments in the John Demjanjuk case, surely one of the strangest in legal history. In view of the new developments in the case (see story on page 1), it is fitting to recall our position.

Following are excerpts from our editorial titled "The Demjanjuk case revisited."

* * *

It was a month ago that a federal judge ruled that John Demjanjuk's U.S. citizenship should be restored, marking yet another chapter in that drawn-out case - "a 21-year legal nightmare," as Mr. Demjanjuk's son-in-law Ed Nishnic described it.

The latest ruling reversed Mr. Demjanjuk's 1981 denaturalization on the grounds that U.S. prosecutors, i.e., the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations, had won its case against Mr. Demjanjuk by virtue of fraud. Judge Paul R. Matia of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, Eastern Division, wrote that the OSI had "acted with reckless disregard for their duty to the court and their discovery obligations" in failing to disclose exculpatory evidence to the Demjanjuk defense.

The February 20 ruling was the latest in a series of landmark defeats for the U.S. government's Nazi-hunting unit, the Office of Special Investigations.

In 1992, perhaps as a foreshadowing of what was to come in 1993 and thereafter, the National Law Journal (December 28, 1992) sarcastically cited the Demjanjuk case among its "Great Moments in the Law" for 1992 and gave its "Ollie North Abuse of Power Award" to then Attorney General William Barr and his predecessor Richard Thornburgh for "serious lack of leadership in three cases," including "the investigation of John Demjanjuk, wrongly accused by the Justice Department of being the infamous Nazi death camp guard, Ivan the Terrible."

Soon thereafter, in July 1993 came the verdict of Israel's Supreme Court: Mr. Demjanjuk was found not guilty of the Nazi war crimes committed by the Treblinka death camp guard known as "Ivan the Terrible." Then, in November 1993 - citing fraud as well as "prosecutorial misconduct" - the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the 1986 extradition order against Mr. Demjanjuk. In October 1994 the Supreme Court refused to hear the Justice Department's appeal of that ruling.

Today, as a result of the latest ruling in the strange case of John Demjanjuk, the former Cleveland autoworker is back to square one. His extradition and denaturalization have been reversed. The Justice Department has clearly and convincingly lost the most important case in its history - its show case. ...

Will the OSI suffer any sanctions as a result of its repeated misconduct? Will anyone at the Justice Department be held responsible for the travesty of justice that occurred in the case of John Demjanjuk? And, will Allan A. Ryan Jr., OSI director in 1980-1983 - who described Demjanjuk in his 1984 book "Quiet Neighbors" as a Nazi war criminal (even before Mr. Demjanjuk was extradited to Israel to stand trial for those crimes) - feel any consequences? ...

Source: "The Demjanjuk case revisited," The Ukrainian Weekly, March 22, 1998, Vol. LXVI, No. 12.

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