germany legal-history jury-nullification murder
Why was the Armenian assassin of Talat Pasha acquitted for murder?
<p>The Armenian assassin of the ex-Ottoman Grand Vizier <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tal%C3%A2t_Pasha" rel="noreferrer">Talat Pasha</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soghomon_Tehlirian" rel="noreferrer">Soghomon Tehlirian</a> was acquitted of murder in his trial. His defence was that he was killing Talat Pasha in retaliation for his crimes in orchestrating the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide" rel="noreferrer">Ottoman Armenian Genocide</a>. </p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Tehlirian was tried for murder, but was eventually acquitted by the
  twelve-man jury. His trial was a rather sensationalized event at the
  time, taking place shortly after the establishment of the Weimar
  Republic, with Tehlirian being represented by three German defense
  attorneys, including Dr. Theodor Niemeyer, professor of law at Kiel
  University. Priest and Armenian Genocide survivor Grigoris Balakian,
  German activist Johannes Lepsius, and German commander of the Ottoman
  armed forces during the war General Liman von Sanders were among
  several of the prominent individuals called as witnesses to the trial.</p>
  
  <p>The trial examined not only Tehlirian’s actions but also Tehlirian's
  conviction that Talât was the main author of the Armenian deportation
  and mass killings. The defense attorneys made no attempt to deny the
  fact that Tehlirian had killed a man, and instead focused on the
  influence of the Armenian Genocide on Tehlirian's mental state.
  Tehlirian claimed during the trial that he had been present in
  Erzincan in 1915 and had been deported along with his family and
  personally witnessed their murder. When asked by the judge if he felt
  any sort of guilt, Tehlirian remarked, "I do not consider myself
  guilty because my conscience is clear…I have killed a man. But I am
  not a murderer.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>However, murder in retaliation for crimes the victim committed is often not considered a legal defence to the act of murder. For example, this <a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/crime/blog/bs-md-ci-homer-retaliatory-killing-20150319-story.html" rel="noreferrer">2013 Baltimore case</a> resulted in the sentencing of the killer to 30 years in jail. </p>

<p>Similarly, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillehammer_affair" rel="noreferrer">Lillehammer affair</a> involves Israeli Mossad agents sent to assassinate a (mistakenly identified) mastermind of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_September_Organization" rel="noreferrer">Munich attacks on Israelis</a>. The agents were arrested and convicted by Norwegian authorities. </p>

<p>A final example was the case of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitaly_Kaloyev" rel="noreferrer">Vitaly Kaloyev</a>, who stabbed to death the air traffic controller responsible for the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9Cberlingen_mid-air_collision" rel="noreferrer">Überlingen mid-air collision</a> in which his family was killed. He was also convicted for murder in that case and sentenced to prison. </p>

<p>What differences in law in that time in Germany led to the acquittal of Soghomon Tehlirian for murder? </p>

<p>See <a href="/questions/tagged/jury-nullification" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;jury-nullification&#39;" rel="tag">jury-nullification</a>.  I'm not a legal historian, so I can't say for sure what the laws on jury acquittals were at that time in that jurisdiction.  However, when a jury has final discretion to acquit a defendant of a crime that's it: They can effectively ignore laws if they want to acquit someone.  Such acquittals do not set a precedent or have any bearing outside of the trial in which they issue their verdict.</p>
