Boston College International and Comparative Law Review Volume 18 | Issue 1 Article 4 12-1-1995 Not Guilty – But Not Innocent: An Analysis of the Acquittal of John Demjanjuk and its Impact on the Future of Nazi War Crimes Trials Lisa J. Del Pizzo Follow this and additional works at: http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/iclr Part of the Criminal Law Commons Recommended Citation Lisa J. Del Pizzo, Not Guilty – But Not Innocent: An Analysis of the Acquittal of John Demjanjuk and its Impact on the Future of Nazi War Crimes Trials, 18 B.C. Int'l & Comp. L. Rev. 137 (1995), http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/iclr/vol18/iss1/4 This Notes is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at Digital Commons @ Boston College Law School. It has been accepted for inclusion in Boston College International and Comparative Law Review by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ Boston College Law School. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Not Guilty-But Not Innocent: An Analysis of the Acquittal of John Demjanjuk and Its Impact on the Future of Nazi War Crimes Trials INTRODUCTION On July 29, 1993, the Supreme Court of the State of Israel acquit ted John Demjanjuk of charges that he was "Ivan the Terrible," a sadistic Nazi gas chamber operator who assisted in the extermina tion of thousands of Jews at the Treblinka death camp in Poland during World War II.! The acquittal, which overturned the district court's 1988 conviction and death sentence,2 was based on new evidence which created a "reasonable doubt" that Demjanjuk was "Ivan the Terrible" of Treblinka.3 The acquittal of John Demjanjuk comes after a sixteen year legal battle which began in the United States in 1977, when the U.S.