Dr. Kerstin Braun is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Law and Justice at the University of Southern Queensland and has just published a book examining the rights of victims of crime in several countries. It is called: Victim Participation Rights – Variation Across Criminal Justice Systems.
In Germany, victims of crime have the right to act as co-plaintiffs or "accessory prosecutors" in criminal cases, and this has affected cases such as the one concerning the Love Parade in Duisburg, the NSU trial (Beate Tschärpe) and the conviction of the Nazi criminal Oskar Görning. This is not allowed in Australia, the UK and the US. In the course of the small series we talk about these examples.
This first program in the series however, deals with the general differences in legal systems in Australia and Germany. The most important is the role of the judge, who has much more control in his courtroom in Germany than in Australia. This can be attributed to a different principle of negotiation.
In Australian, the jurisdiction is based on an adversarial system. The lawyers of the prosecution and those of the defense are acting in an often aggressive manner as opposing parties, execute cross-examination and also have the say about what evidence is presented.
In Germany, on the other hand, the "inquisition maxim" applies, which states that a court has an obligation to investigate the facts before a decision is made without the request of an affected party or independently thereof. There is no jury, the victims or their relatives may act as co-plaintiffs and the interrogation of the defendant and the taking of the evidence during the trial is usually carried out by the presiding judge.
