Death Sentence Despite the Law: A Secret 1962 Crimes-against-Humanity Trial in Kiev

Shortly before the 1962 trial of twelve previously-convicted collaborators and death camp guards, then-Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet Leonid Brezhnev signed a resolution suspending the principle of lex prospicit, non respicit (the law looks forward, not back) during this case. Soon thereafter a military tribunal sentenced the accused to death on the basis of expired laws dating from World War II, and despite a legal prohibition on the death penalty for crimes committed more than fifteen years earlier. In this way the Soviet judicial system set aside the principle, recognized in Europe since Roman times, that any law increasing punishment for a particular crime should not be retroactive, while laws ameliorating punishment should be retroactive.