Defense demands acquittal for accused Nazi News
Defense demands acquittal for accused Nazi

[JURIST] Defense lawyers for German citizen Ladislav Niznansky [BBC report], the 88-year-old former Slovak Nazi commander accused of wartime massacres, demanded Tuesday that their client be acquitted and given compensation for his time in prison, saying there was no evidence showing his guilt. Niznansky was convicted in absentia and sentenced to death in then-communist Czechoslovakia in 1962 for his part in murdering 164 people during three massacres in 1945 after a failed uprising against Slovakia's Nazi puppet government. Niznansky was not arrested until March 2004 [JURIST report] in Germany. Prosecutors in the current trial, which began in September 2004 [JURIST report], have asked for the maximum sentence of life in prison for Niznansky, but his defense team says that without the evidence from the 1962 trial, which the defense says was a "communist show trial," the prosecution has little upon which to base its case. The court ordered Niznansky's release from police custody in October 2004 after a key witness admitted to no longer being able to remember the events clearly. A verdict in the trial is expected later this month. AP has more.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Thomas Becket, former Chancellor of England, murdered by Henry II's knights

On December 29, 1170, Archbishop Thomas Becket, former Chancellor of England, was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral by knights acting in the name of Henry II.

Becket and Henry had been entangled in a power struggle over, among other things, criminal jurisdiction over clergy. Read a contemporary account of the murder of Thomas Becket.

Texas attains US statehood

On December 29, 1845, Texas became the twenty-eighth state to join the United States of America when US President James K. Polk signed the Ordinance of Annexation. Texas had a complicated path to statehood because it had formerly been part of Mexico and then an independent republic. The US Congress passed the Annexation of the Republic of Texas Joint Resolution on March 1, 1845. Voters in Texas then approved the Ordinance of Annexation in October, before it was approved by the US Congress and signed into law by President Polk on this day in 1845. The US Supreme Court later ruled in Texas v. White that, despite its unique path to statehood, Texas did not have the right to secede from the union.