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Wrongly Convicted Database Record
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Charge: |
Crimes Against Humanity |
Sentence: |
Death |
Years Imprisoned: |
7 |
Year Crime: |
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Year Convicted: |
1988 |
Year Cleared: |
1993 |
U.S. State or Country of Crime: |
Israel |
County or Region of Crime: |
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City of Crime: |
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Result: |
Judicially Exonerated Released |
Summary of Case: |
"John Demjanjuk was wrongly convicted in 1988 of being Ivan the Terrible, a sadistic guard at the Treblinka death camp during WWII. John Demjanjuk's conviction was based on the testimony of multiple Treblinka survivors. He was sentenced to death. While Demjanjuk was appealing, his lawyers were provided evidence in Soviet archives that Demjanjuk he was never at Treblinka, and that Ivan the Terrible was a man named Ivan Marchenko, older and darker-haired than Demjanjuk, and scarred on one cheek. Based on the new evidence that Demjanjuk was wrongly identified, in 1993 the Israeli Supreme Court reversed Demjanjuk's conviction, vacated his death sentence, and ordered his release. Demjanjuk had been extradited from the U.S. in 1986 and was released after being wrongly imprisoned for 7 years. In 2011 Demjanjuk was convicted in Germany of an accessory to murder based on the prosecution's allegation he had been a guard at the Sobibor death camp in Poland. The prosecution did not allege that Demjanjuk personally harmed anyone. Demjanjuk's defense was that he was the victim of mistaken identity, and that the prosecution's key evidence -- an ID Card -- was a fake. His defense was supported by a 1985 FBI report that wasn't discovered until after his trial began in November 2009, that stated in part, “Justice is ill-served in the prosecution of an American citizen on evidence which is not only normally inadmissible in a court of law, but based on evidence and allegations quite likely fabricated by the KGB.” Demjanjuk died in March 2012 at the age of 91, while his appeal was pending. Under German law a defendant is presumed innocent until an appeal is decided, so Demjanjuk's conviction was invalidated since his death ended his appeal." |
Conviction Caused By: |
"False identification by "eyewitnesses"" |
Innocence Proved By: |
Discovery of evidence proving Demjanjuk was never at Treblinka where the crimes occurred. |
Defendant Aided By: |
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Compensation Awarded: |
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Was Perpetrator Identified? |
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Age When Imprisoned: |
66 |
Age When Released: |
73 |
Sex: |
Male |
Skin/Ethnicity: |
White |
Information Source 1: |
"How To Solve A Murder: The Forensic Handbook," Michael Kurland, MacMillian, 1995, p. 115." |
Information Location 1: |
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Information Source 2: |
"1988 - "'Ivan the Terrible" guilty of war crimes, BBC News, April 18, 1988" |
Information Location 2: |
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/april/18/newsid_2525000/2525057.stm |
Information Source 3: |
"A Terrible Ivan, Editorial, The Jerusalem Post, November 30, 3009" |
Information Location 3: |
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1259243045194&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull |
Information Source 4: |
"Convicted Nazi criminal Demjanjuk deemed innocent in Germany over technicality, HAARETZ.com, March 23, 2012." |
Information Location 4: |
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/convicted-nazi-criminal-demjanjuk-deemed-innocent-in-germany-over-technicality-1.420280 |
Information Source 5: |
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Information Location 5: |
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Comments About Case: |
Innocents Database Created and Maintained by Hans Sherrer innocents@forejustice.org