U.S. Supreme Court Justice Jackson: "Never choose a defendant and then search for a crime."

As a law professor at West Point, I often cited U.S. Supreme Court Justice Jackson -- who I have always admired greatly for his insistence that law was a shield for the people rather than a sword for the state. For example, he ruled that a person could not be convicted of a crime that he had no idea he was committing.

Even though Jackson was a supreme court justice, he was called to serve as the chief prosecutor in the Nurnberg trials. His goal there was to make law an even bigger shield, by essentially outlawing war. But there is real controversy as to whether the ends justified the means, and whether he participated in the very practice he had previously publicly condemned.

In 1940 Jackson was US Attorney General. He publicly addressed federal prosecutors and warned them against

picking the man and then putting investigators to work, to pin some offense on him. It is in this realm—in which the prosecutor picks some person whom he dislikes or desires to embarrass, or selects some group of unpopular persons and then looks for an offense—that the greatest danger of abuse of prosecuting power lies. It is here that law enforcement becomes personal, and the real crime becomes that of being unpopular with the predominant or governing group, being attached to the wrong political views or being personally obnoxious to, or in the way of, the prosecutor himself.” 

In David Irving’s book Nuremberg (1996), which is supported by documentary evidence like a brief submitted in court, we learn that the prosecution team, including Russia, managed with Justice Jackson's participation to set a precedent for doing exactly what the quote above condemns.

You can read an excellent review here: 

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/08/11/tyranny-at-nuremberg/

And you can download the book here: 

http://www.fpp.co.uk/books/Nuremberg/index.html