A Reading List and a Quiz for Judge Dr. Ralph Guise-Rübe

If he's going to diss(cuss) the American criminal justice system, he'd better get it right!

A few weeks ago Jens Söring got in touch with media people in Germany announcing he had found a German judge willing to do a special or a podcast with him.

According to my sources, Söring told the media contacts that at the end of the podcast, the judge would pronounce him innocent, or at least say that the evidence wasn’t sufficient to convict Söring. At the time, I wondered just who that judge might be. Now I think we can all agree the prime candidate is Dr. Ralph Guise-Rübe, President of the Hannover Regional Court. It was this judge who gave an embarrassing, error-filled interview to Die Welt on 9 December 2022 in which he claimed that American judges “often” frame innocent people to keep voters happy.

Is Guise-Rübe ready to delve into the details of an American criminal case? Judging by that interview, not by a mile. He didn’t even manage to identify the basic standard of proof in American criminal cases. This is like a physicist being unable to tell you what the speed of light is, or a doctor being stumped by what the liver does. Of course, there’s no reason for Guise-Rübe to know this information, since he studied law in Germany, not the United States. But then again, why was he discussing American law if he doesn’t know what he’s talking about?

Guise-Rübe has a lot of work to do before he is capable of saying anything about American law which is worth taking seriously. But of course, he can do this work — learning is a life-long process!

So I am offering this reading list to Judge Guise-Rübe, plus a few quiz questions to test his knowledge.

Reading List

• The entire record of the case. As I pointed out in my earlier post, Guise-Rübe says he’s read about “2,000 pages” of the record in the Jens Söring case. That’s only about 1/4 of the entire trial record, not to mention the direct appeal, the state habeas corpus petition, and the federal habeas corpus petition, including the 1,400 pages of exhibits to it. He’s got a lot of catching up to do.

• Dressler, Understanding Criminal Law by Joshua Dressler. This is the standard text for students in American law schools. It sets out the basic principles of American criminal law in a clear, readable, easy-to-grasp style.

  

  This book will provide the judge with an overview of how crimes are defined in American (and common) law: What are the elements of burglary, larceny, rape, fraud, or murder? What state of mind must be proven in each case, and what forms of evidence are used to prove it? How do you prove someone was an accomplice to a crime, or formed a criminal conspiracy?

• Loewy, Criminal Procedure: Cases, Materials and Questions. As in every legal system, there are two components to any area of law, substance and procedure. Dressler’s book is about substantive criminal law: What you need to prove to convict someone. Procedure is about how you prove it. What are the phases of an American criminal proceeding? What are the powers of the police, and limits on them? What forms of evidence are acceptable in an American courtroom? What are the responsibilities of the judge, the prosecutor, and the defense attorney? Who is allowed to testify about what subjects?

  

• Fisher, Evidence. What types of proof are considered reliable in American courtrooms? What information is the jury allowed to hear? Which witnesses are competent to testify? What logical inferences is the decision-maker allowed to draw? What are witnesses allowed to say on direct examination versus cross-examination? How do you prove documents are accurate, complete, and reliable? What is hearsay, and what are the exceptions to it?

  

• Costello, Virginia Criminal Law and Procedure. So far, all of these books have been about the general principles of American criminal law. But of course every American state has its own separate criminal code and procedure rules. So Judge Guise-Rübe will also need to study up on Virginia criminal law. Fortunately, there’s a book for that, too:

  

• Purver & Taylor, Handling Criminal Appeals. Judge Guise-Rübe has already said he thinks Söring was wrongly convicted. This means, of course, that all of the appeals judges on the Virginia Court of Appeals, the Virginia Supreme Court, the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia, the United States Federal Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and the United States Supreme Court all got it wrong. They should all have recognized the obvious errors in Jens Söring’s trial and set him free — or at least granted him a new trial. Instead, every all of these judges ruled that Söring’s trial was fair, and many observed that his conviction was based on “overwhelming” evidence.

  

  Judge Guise-Rübe will therefore need to familiarize himself with the basic rules of American criminal appeals, to show where all these experienced American judges went wrong. The regularly-updated, 2000-page book depicted above should give him a good start on this.

• Hertz & Liebman, Federal Habeas Corpus Practice and Procedure (2 vols.). After Jens Söring went all the way through the Virginia court system, he filed a federal habeas corpus petition in the federal court system which went all the way to the Supreme Court, losing with every judge along the way.

  

  To understand why all of those senior federal judges missed the errors in Jens Söring’s trial, Dr. Guise-Rübe will need to master the notorious intricacies of American federal habeas corpus practice and procedure. This used to be my specialty!

Quiz

And now a quiz. Assuming Dr. Guise-Rübe has done his homework, he should be able to answer the following questions about the Söring case:

1. Why did the prosecution oppose the inclusion of a lesser-included offense instruction in the jury charge at Söring’s trial?

2. On the question of whether Jens Söring’s 1986 confessions in Richmond, England were admissible in the Bedford County Circuit Court, which law applied: English law or American law?

3. Which American Supreme Court case held that it was acceptable for detectives not to permit English solicitor Keith Barker to speak with Söring while Söring was confessing after Barker requested permission to do so?

4. When did audio recording of confessions become mandatory in the USA? (Trick question!) When did it become mandatory in the UK?

5. What is the “doctrine of optional completeness” and what role did it play in Söring’s trial?

6. Why did the Virginia and US federal courts reject Söring’s claims under Brady v. Maryland?

7. Why were Elizabeth’s Haysom’s accounts of what Söring told her relating to the murders of the Haysoms not hearsay?

8. Was Jens Söring’s habeas corpus appeal subject to the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996?

9. Why was Robert Hallett not allowed to testify as an expert witness?

10. Why were the telephone and room-service records from the Marriott Hotel not hearsay?

11. What did a defendant have to prove to be entitled to claim a defense of “diminished capacity” in Virginia in 1986? (Trick question!)

12. What would be the consequence if Judge Sweeney had believed Söring’s claim that Kenneth Beever forced him to confess by threatening Elizabeth Haysom?

13. What level of corroboration is required for confessions under Virginia law?

14. Why was prosecutor Jim Updike not allowed to tell the jury that Jens Söring had lied during his testimony at the pre-trial hearing in March 1990 (see question 12), even though this fact was obviously relevant to Söring’s credibility?

15. Why was Jens Söring not prosecuted and convicted for perjury even though the jury necessarily found that he had lied under oath during his June 1990 trial testimony?

I suppose I should make it clear that all of these questions have answers, and I know them. If Dr. Guise-Rübe is capable of answering all of these questions accurately, then, in my opinion, he likely knows enough about the American (and UK) criminal justice system and the Söring case to have a qualified opinion on it.

If he can’t answer them, then he has insufficient knowledge and, in my opinion, should refrain from commenting on the case in public. If he nevertheless does so, I will be there every minute of the way to point out every one of his mistakes. It’s the least I can do to foster understanding among the world’s peoples!