A. The delay of some -- well, one could say a large number of NN cases which are discussed in this document was due to the fact that when the RAF attacked Berlin in November 1943, a large part of the files burned, together with the office building, and that there was hardly a possibility, at least only under greatly increased difficulties, to again reconstitute the individual files. Attempts were made, but it was successful only to a small extent.
For many prisoners, or at least for some, this without doubt brought about the condition that they were not tried before a court, or, in any case they could not be condemned to death.
Q: Finally, the prosecution in connection with the NN cases submitted Exhibit 327. This concerns the information about the sentencing of women and the pardon question. Please comment on this.
A: From the documents that the prosecution submitted, it was already apparent that Hitler in regard to women who had been condemned, insofar as they originated from occupied territories, on principle pardoned them if they had been condemned to death, with the commutation of the death sentence into a prison term.
At the same time, however, instructions were issued that the prisoner concerned should not be informed during the war that this clemency had been exercised. Thus, in other words, the condemned women while they were under arrest continuously remained in uncertainty as to whether the sentence would be executed or not. That seemed to me so terribly hard that I ordered my deputy, Partisius, to report to the Ministry, and to suggest that by appeal to Hitler this passage be repealed. The defendant von Ammon also drafted a corresponding letter, but it seems that it was not sent out.
Q: That concludes the group of NN cases, and now I am coming to the problem of the extraordinary objection. As is known, due to the law for the change of regulations of the general Criminal Procedure the Military Penal Procedure and the Penal Code of 16 September, 1939, the extraordinary objection was introduced. The Prosecution submitted the following documents on this point: Exhibit 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 181, 373, 474, 495, 512, 515. Witness, first of all what general remarks do you have to make on the subject?
A: The extraordinary objection which was introduced in 1939 was based on a bill which had already been drafted. The purpose to be able to correct obvious mistakes in jurisdiction, and thereby effect uniformity in jurisdiction.
Q: In Article 2, Paragraph 5 of the Law of 16 September, 1939 it says: And I quote: "Against sentences which have legal validity, the Chief Reich Public Prosecutor at the Supreme Court can within a year after the sentence becomes valid, raise an objection if on account of serious misgivings against the correctness of the sentence he consideres a new trial and decision in the case necessary."
In paragraph 3 of the same section it says, and I quote: "If the sentence has been pronounced by the People's Court the objection is up to the Reich Public Prosecutor at the People's Court, and the decision is up to the special senate of the People's Court." According to this, one should assume that the two Chief Reich Public Prosecutors ware those who had to decide whether an extraordinary objection was to be made or not. Please comment on this.
A: This assumption would be incorrect. According to all the regulations and the constitutional basis of his decree, it was without doubt that this extensive statement could be made only by the head of the state, the government, because the extraordinary objection repealed the sentence which had been pronounced, and returned, the trial to the stage at which it was before the trial. So thus, if an extraordinary objection was raised, a new trial had to take place as if nothing had happened heretofore. Therefore, through instructions issued within the office, it was assured that the two Reich Chief Prosecutors, the one at the People's Court and the other at the Reich Supreme Court, could raise an extraordinary objection only in virtue of an order of the Minister of Justice as a representative of the leadership of the state. And this is not expressed in the law because according to the German conception of a trial, the Minister of Justice cannot make any direct statements in a trial. The two Reich Chief Prosecutors, therefore, made these statements, as I said, therefore, only from case to case on orders of the Minister, and the order, which as a rule was even issued so unequivocally that the statement which had to be made, with the reasons for it, was prescribed to the Chief Reich Prosecutors.
Thus, the Chief Reich Prosecutor, just as the other offices, for instance the General Public Prosecutors or the presidents of the courts, were prevented if they thought that there was a cause for it from suggesting on their own, to the Minister of Justice that he should issue such an order.
Q: Witness, the material decision as to whether an extraordinary objection should be raised or not was thus made in the Ministry?
A: The material decision was made exclusively by the Minister of Justice. That is exclusively he personally made it on the basis of a report made to him by his referent personally. It was particularly like that; in case of every decree issued by the Ministry - it had been assured that either by the signature of the under secretary, or the Minister or the division chief, it was made clear that the decision had actually been made by the Minister in this case.
Q; Did you ever raise an extraordinary objection to the court without having an order from the Minister?
A: That never happened.
Q: You just said that the two Chief Reich Public Prosecutors as the officials, as supervising authorities of the Administration of Justice, for example general public prosecutors, presidents of the highest courts, etc., had the right to suggest to the Minister of Justice that the Minister of Justice should issue an order to raise an extraordinary objection.
Did you make use of that possibility?
A: I only did so very infrequently out of my own decision. And I still remember a few cases in which sentences pronounced by the senate presided over by Freisler were concerned. We were per se not very much inclined to attack sentences pronounced by our own court by such a legal recourse. However, Minister Thierack was not much inclined to admit such objections, but toward the senate presiding over by Freisler, he occasionally could be made to do so. The cases which are pertinent here, I may perhaps describe briefly. The first senate in one case had condemned a person to death because of treason. The facts were as follows: The defendant had transferred model 38 machine gun into the hands of an enemy; he had obtained the machine gun and given it to an enemy agent. The enemy had known about this machine gun for a long time because they had captured many of these machine guns on the battlefield. Thus, only attempted treason could be the case, and the indictment was filed in that manner. Nevertheless, the senate pronounced the death sentence. Here the extraordinary objection was permitted. A second case was a death sentence against a member of the protectorate, the opinion of which was based upon threequarters of a page by Freisler. I represented the opinion in this case that this was not a sentence at all, since from the facts one could not find out at all what the defendant had done; and because of this legal mistake the extraordinary objection should be allowed. This extraordinary objection, too, was permitted.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will recess for fifteen minutes.
(A recess was taken).
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal is again in session.
THE PRESIDENT: You may proceed.
BY DR. GRUBE:
Q.- Witness, could the defense suggest that extraordinary objection be made?
A.- Yes, the defense counsel could do it, too. The contents of such petitions frequently showed that pure clemency reasons were used by them as arguments in favor of an extraordinary objection and not basic legal questions. In such cases it was suggested to them that they make a clemency plea. But , if the extraordinary objection was bases on such facts that there was a hope that it might succeed, I submitted it to the Minister of Justice and supported it. However, and I have stressed that here before, it was very difficult to get Thierack to allow extraordinary objection to be made in favor of a defendant.
Q.- May I interpolate a question. Were you, as Chief Prosecutor, the competent official who had to deal with such extraordinary objections?
A.- No, no, that was the Chief Reich Prosecutor of the Reich Supreme Court at Leipzig.
Q.- Can you tell us something as to whether extraordinary objection was made frequently?
A.- During the early part of the war, when the extraordinary objection was introduced, that is, until approximately 1942, it was a very infrequent occurrence. It was altogether the exception that it was made. From that time onward however, their number increased slowly, but I cannot even give a rough estimate as to the number of extraordinary objections that were ordered. Originally, the Ministry of Justice, if a report was made by me as to whether an extraordinary objection was to be made - for example, in the case of a sentence passed by the District Court of Appeals, originally the Ministry was agreeable to my using again and again the phrase that the sentence gave rise to misgivings on some points, but these points were by no means of such a serious nature that the unusual recourse of the extraordinary objection should be used.
That became different only when the new head of Department IV of the Ministry of Justice , that was Ministerial Director Vollmer, assumed the office of head of that Department. I asked him about this one day, and inquired from him how it was that these days the Minister more frequently ordered an extraordinary objection to be made. In reply he said, since the Fuehrer decree of August 1942, Thierack had all authorization in the field of the Administration of Justice and, therefore, in the sphere of the extraordinary objection too, he had more scope than hitherto.
DR. GRUBE: May I interpolate here. The statements by the witness concerning the last few questions refer to prosecution Exhibits 178 and 474.
Q.- Witness, Freissler, as we know, was the Presiding Judge of the First Senate. In addition, he was also the President of the Special Senate - that is to say, of the Senate which had to decide about cases where extraordinary objection had been made. If, as you said before, such objection was made against sentences passed by Freisler's First Senate, the same Freisler had to decide the same case the second time as President of the Special Senate. Was the extraordinary objection in cases like that, from the very outset, not a matter without any practical significance?
A.- That state of affairs was altogether undesirable. The Special Senate had different associate judges from the First Senate, but it did have the same Presiding Judge, and as the charge of the extraordinary objection was bases on the fact that the court, the sentence of which was being decided, had committed a serious legal mistake, it was not correct to have the same Presiding Judge. But this was different when a case was reopened. Under German law it is desirable that the same judges sit in the court when a case is reopened because the judges can then apply the knowledge which they gained at the first trial. Krohne and I, on account of that state of affairs, frequently made representations to Thierack and finally the Minister decided that in such a case Vice President Krohne should preside over the Special Senate since Freisler would have to be considered as prevented in cases where a sentence by his own Senate was being decided.
Q.- Generally speaking, what was the result in cases where extraordinary objection had been made?
A.- It cannot be disputed that in many cases the extraordinary objection was successful, but that was not a rule without exception. It did happen that the former Senates -- I mean that the new Senates corresponded with the former Senates. It did also happen that the sentence was reduced, and occasionally it happened that the person was acquitted although extraordinary objection had been made with the opposite aim.
Q.- Can you give us an example -- for example, can you cite a case of a doctor from Hamburg?
A.- Yes, a well-known doctor from Hamburg had been sentenced for seven years in a penitentiary by the first Senate for undermining military morale. Thierack in a very sharp decree ordered extraordinary objection to be made. The context showed clearly that the aim of the extraordinary objection was to have the doctor sentenced to death at the retrial. But the sentence of seven years in a penitentiary was upheld.
Q.- The Prosecution introduced an affidavit by Dr. Weimann as Exhibit 495. That affidavit deals with the case of Dr. Will. Can you comment on that case?
A.- I remember the extraordinary objection in that case very well; and it was made in favor of Dr. Will. It was not by any means made in order to have the entire property confiscated by a new sentence, which apparently is what the Prosecution assumes, because in view of the considerable property which Dr. Will owned, it really did not matter whether the money was left in the hands of his heirs or not.
At the new trial, which I did not observe closely because it took place during the period when I was otherwise occupied, on account of the events of the 20th of July, as I was told, the witnesses gave even more unfavorable testimony than they did at the former trial. That was probably the reason why the first sentence was upheld. However, if the death sentence remained, then the property had to be confiscated under law, that is to say, the entire property; at least the sentence could not allow even part of it to go to the family of the condemned person. That could only be done by way of a clemency plea, and in some cases it was done through the clemency plea.
Q.- Furthermore, the prosecution submitted Exhibit 512. That document refers to the Gaida-Sceletzni case. Can you comment on that case?
A.- The document reveals that Gaida and Sceletzni both had wanted to join the Czech Legion. However, Sceletzni was not condemned for that reason, but only because he had committed a passport offense. Evidently it was the aim of the extraordinary objection to have that unequal treatment of the two defendants corrected. That it was ordered by the Minister of Justice was in the nature of things. The sentence showed that it was successful. Sceletzni was sentenced to a somewhat higher prison term; I believe it was five years in the penitentiary.
Q.- If a sentence had been passed, once it was passed what were the following developments?
A.- That varied according to whether the sentence had been a prison sentence or a death sentence. If it was a prison sentence, it was the task of the Reich Prosecution, just as it was that of any other prosecuting office, to see to it that the condemned person was moved to the prison which was provided for him according to the instructions of the Ministry. All further measures -- the treatment of the prisoner in the prison, his transfer to another institution, his employment -- did not concern the prosecution. That was entirely a matter for the administration of the prisons, which was under the jurisdiction and supervision of the Reich Ministry of Justice.
Every time a death sentence had been passed a report had to be sent, and with that report the head of State had to be asked whether he would make use of his right to exercise clemency, that is to say, whether he wished to commute the death sentence to a prison sentence.
Q,- May I interpolate a brief question?
DR. GRUBE: The witness is referring to Exhibit 278.
Q. (continuing)- In what way was the decision of the head of the State brought about?
A.- A report was made, and added to it were ail files and all those statements made by all authorities whoso opinion on the clemency plea had to be heard, including the opinion which the Senior Prosecutor or the Chief Reich Prosecutor who made the report held himself.
Q.- What was your own task in these two cases: Death sentence or prison sentence?
A.- In regard to files concerning cases where the sentence had been for a prison term, I did not deal with those myself. There were special officials to deal with such cases; they were the so-called Rechstpfleger the administrators of law. They dealt with such cases under the supervision of the public prosecutor in charge of the case, or under the supervision of the head of the department. That explains why my name does not appear at all on the indictment of Kubiak, NG-614, Exhibit 267;
Szczerbinski, NG-597, Exhibit 134; and Szopa, NG-598, Exhibit 266.
After a death sentence had been passed, a report on the clemency plea had to be rendered by the public prosecutor in charge of the case. He prepared that report, he drafted it, and it was submitted to me after the head of the department had examined it.
Q.- If the person who had been condemned to death and his defense counsel had not submitted a clemency plea, in such cases did a decision have to be obtained from the head of State or other authorities on the clemency plea?
A.- That report had to be made under all circumstances; it had to be made too where no clemency plea had been made. It even had to be made in the rare cases when the condemned person had expressly stated that he did not wish a clemency plea to be made. Such cases did occur.
Q.- Can you state in virtue of what provisions that obligation to make clemency pleas officially existed?
A.- That provision is contained in the Code of Penal Procedure.
Q.- In what article?
A.- In Article 453. And it is also evident from Paragraph 13 in the Clemency Plea order.
Q.- May I state that Article 13 of the Clemency Plea Order is contained in Exhibit 278 of the Prosecution.
How did you have to proceed when you had to report to the Minister of Justice?
A.- The public prosecutor in charge of the case, first of all, had to obtain the opinion of all the agencies listed under Paragraph 13; that is to say, he had to obtain the opinion of the Court, of the prison, for some period, and he also had to obtain the opinion of the prosecution. In the case of civil servants who had been sentenced, their superior officers had to be heard. When all these agencies had given their views, it was then the duty of the public prosecutor to examine the clemency plea for its correctness, for example, when the convicted person had stated that he had committed particularly courageous or decent acts and that they should be considered.
Q.- What attitude did you take?
A.- I attached the greatest importance to having these investigations carried out very carefully. That is the reason why the clemency procedure so very often took such a long time with the Reich Prosecution.
Q.- I am now coming to Exhibit 449; which was submitted by the Prosecution, Please comment on that exhibit.
A.- Exhibit 449 concerns the first measure which the Ministry of Justice adopted to have the clemency pleas processed more quickly. The letter from Freisler shows that the Chief Public Prosecutor, that is myself -- and the same applied to all Senior Public Prosecutors -- had been instructed to make the reports shorter.
At that time that merely meant that there was no need in the report of a clemency plea to give a report on the facts of the case. Originally the clemency plea had to start by recounting the facts of the case and by giving an opinion and details as to what extent the sentence, either for material or legal reasons, might give rise to misgivings.
Q. Exhibit 279 reveals that in September 1943 the Minister of Justice ordered that the Public Prosecution in the future no longer was to obtain the opinion of other agencies on the clemency plea, but without giving an opinion should pass the files on to the Minister of Justice unless there were misgivings about the sentence as such. That decree, as is shown in the document, was directed to all Public Prosecutions, and I would ask you to tell us what the effects of this decree were on clemency proceedings.
A. The date of the decree, September 1943, shows that that decree followed closely the events which occurred in Ploetzensee, events which have been mentioned here before. The decree wanted to make certain that in the future the clemency plea problem would be dealt with more quickly. But even after this new arrangement the convicted persons and their defense counsel still had sufficient time and opportunity to submit clemency pleas and to give their reasons for them. But one thing had been made more difficult. The examination of these clemency pleas for their correctness was no longer possible for the prosecutions in the majority of cases. The prosecutors now had to restrict themselves to adding the pleas to their reports without changing them. The time limit laid down in the decree was, as a rule, not adhered to because the offices at the People's Court and the Reich Prosecution were so overburdened that it was impossible for them to submit the files within the time limit set. Owing to that, occasionally there was sufficient time to make further investigations in the matter of the clemency plea. However, the opinion of the court, the prison, and all other agencies was no longer heard. They had been of importance before.
Q. Please give us your opinion about Exhibit 281. That is the note of 14 October 1944 by the Minister of Justice and letter of 7 October 1944 by the Minister of Justice in which the clemency plea procedure of the Reich Prosecution was criticized because it took so much time.
A. Yes. Well, I have already mentioned that. All those decrees to expedite the clemency pleas failed to a certain extent because in effect it was impossible, because of overwork, to comply with them.
Q. The Prosecution further has submitted Exhibit 530 which states that the Minister of Justice on 17 January 1945 ordered that the death sentences were to be forwarded to the Reich Minister of Justice within a few days after they had been pronounced. Can you give us any further details?
A. Yes. I said that that decree for expediting was partly only on paper, because unless the facts were very simple and unless the sentence was brief and unless the office for once was not so busy, -- it was only if those conditions prevailed that reports on the sentences were made within three days, but I don't believe that that happened often.
Q. I do not wish to deal with the question as to what was your general attitude to the jurisdiction of the People's Court. I merely want to ask you what was your attitude in respect of the question as to whether a clemency plea was to be supported or not.
A. Always in my former offices, too, I have considered it a matter of course that it was my duty in clemency pleas particularly to treat this work with particular seriousness. Whenever there was a justifiable reason for clemency I suggested that clemency be exercised. So-called "clear cases" which were mentioned here never came to my notice. Therefore I never sent in a, report, "This is a clear case. There is no need for you to occupy yourselves with it for any considerable time." Therefore it was highly undesirable to me when in 1943 by the decree of the minister those restrictions in clemency matters were imposed on me.
Q. When you mentioned a decree just now you were referring to Exh. 279?
A. Yes, Exh. 279. The courts, the senates, and the courts in the Laender, the Special Courts, Senates, all regretted it very much that they were no longer in a position to give an opinion in the clemency plea. I know that from my former experience when every day I was in touch with the penal courts what happened was that in the court it had already been mentioned during the consultation that for certain reasons we do want to comply with the laws and propose such and such a sentence, but we will ask the Public Prosecutor to ask for clemency for the Convicted person. That was no longer possible. Or it was only possible in the rare cases when the Court did so officially. That did happen.
Q. In respect of your suggestions for clemency did you make any difference whether the convicted person was a German citizen or a foreigner ?
A. I considered only the facts and not to the person.
Q. From the vast number of examples can you cite two decisive cases which would demonstrate your attitude to the clemency plea?
A. I should like to explain my attitude by choosing the Sturgkh case as an example. The Court is already familiar with that case for another reason.
A. May I interpolate here, the clemency which was granted to Graf Sturgkh is mentioned in Prosecution Exhibit 359.
A. Graf Sturgkh was a relative of the other Graf Sturgkh who had been murdered . He was an Austrian Legitimist, and before the German troops had occupied France he, with the Austrian Legitimists, that is to say with the members of the Hapsburg House, had made contact with members of the Hapsburg family for the purpose of eliminating the Germans from Austria. He had been put into the hands of the Germans and had been placed before the People's Court. In this case I had not agreed to ask for a death sentence. The Prosecutor at the first did not ask for it, either. Yes the senate sentenced Sturgkh to death.
The sentence seemed unusually harsh to me because what he had done would hardly endanger the security of the Reich, for in my opinion the influence which he wanted to exercise in favor of the situation at the time had very little chance of cussess. Therefore I was resolved from the very beginning , as far as I was able, to suggest that clemency be granted, but I had decided to do so in a form which would avoid my application being dropped in the wastepaperbasket. That was made more difficult because the Senate had not only given very good reasons for the sentence it had passed, but that also in its opinion on the clemency plea it had expressed itself in favor of the execution of the death sentence ....The clemency plea which was submitted on behalf of Sturgkh also referred to the tragic events in his own family. In order to save time I handed it on to the Austrian authorities to have the contents examined. Before it had been returned the sister of the condemned man whom I didn't know called on me. She was in great excitement and very worried because she had already called on various officials, none of whom had been able to give here any comforting news.
Court No. III, Case No. 3.
I indicated to her that in my opinion there was some hope in the case, even though that did not depend on myself. I gathered from her words that she hoped through some direct approach or other to place a clemency plea into Hitler's own hands; and that first of all she had attached importance to the fact that no decision should have been made which might jeopardize this step of hers. I helped her on that. I delayed the matter further until finally I was certain that she had been able to get rid of her petition. Then I forwarded my files with the official clemency plea to the Minister of Justice, and at the end I said that according to reliable information in my possession Hitler had become interested in the matter; and that, therefore, it seemed essential to me that the Minister should not refuse to grant clemency in the near future but that he should submit the case to Hitler; and, as a result Graf Sturgkh was granted clemency. As far as I know, and as far as I remember, the death sentence was commuted to ten years imprisonment, and after he had served only some of that term he was discharged.
Q Witness, do you know what position Graf Sturgkh holds today?
AAs far as I know, he is a member of the Board of Directors of the victims of Fascism, an Austrian organization.
Q May I say here that is part of my document books. I shall submit affidavits by Count Sturgkh and Countess Sturgkh which will reveal that Sturgkh said that he owed his life exclusively to Lautz. Witness, can you mention another case which will demonstrate your practice in clemency matters?
A That is the first case, and that occurred in Alsace. The facts of the case were like this. In the autumn of 1942, at the Reich Military Court (Reichs Kriegsgericht), two big cases from Alsace were pending. In one case the facts were these. In Strassbourg a fairly large group of people had joined together, that is to say, people from the Alsace; I mean they were French people; most of them small officials or business men, but there were some workmen among them too. It was the aim of the group to hide French prisoners of war who had escaped from camps in the Reich, when they were passing through Strassbourg; to give them civilian Court No. III, Case No. 3.clothing; to give them money and food; and to help them escape across the southern part of France to join De Gaulle's Army in North Africa.
Many of those prisoners wanted to go to North Africa; some of them, of course, wanted to go home. That trial was transferred by the Reich Military Court to the People's Court. When the investigating judge had finished his work on the case -- that was approximately in December, 1942 -- the indictment was filed by reason of aiding and abetting the enemy, and it was filed at first against seven persons. The trial was heard at Strassbourg at the beginning of January, 1943; Freisler was the presiding judge. I attended the proceedings and, therefore, I was in a position, having received the impression of the trial, to tell the prosecutor what my views were in regard to the sentence for which he should ask. Only in the case of three persons who were incriminated most heavily I gave my consent for him to demand the death sentence. The senate, however, pronounced the death sentence on five persons. Therefore, I decided in this case, too, to work energetically for the clemency plea. Things were made more difficult for me, because first of all the senate had taken up a definite attitude completely different from my own; and, secondly, because the Gauleiter was asking with great emphasis for execution of the sentence. Later on, however, I succeeded in overcoming the opinion of the Gauleiter. That had further effects on the second trial which had been pending before the military court where also several heavy sentences were passed. In both cases many clemency pleas were granted.
Q In both trials together there were twenty-three defendants; were there?
A Yes, there were.
Q One of the people to whom the clemency plea was granted was a Dr. Wenniger, wasn't it?
A Yes, that is right.
Q Can you tell us what position the Frenchman Dr. Wenniger holds today?
A He is the Chief of the Administration of Justice in the French Zone.
Court No. III, Case No. 3.
Q May I say that the French Government has made available to me several documents which refer to that case. I shall submit them as exhibits.
MR. LaFOLLETTE: If your Honors please, I am not advised as to whether the Marshal has been able to serve the Court's order -- I am advised now that he has served the Court's order on Frau Huppertz; I am advised that there is a ten page plea of Doctor -- the response or answer of Dr. Marx's which was filed with the Secretary General, which is now being translated. I also am advised that there was about a four page response left with the Secretary General in this Court at noon approximately. I don't know whether that has gone to the translation department or not. Of course I do not know whether issues of fact are raised, but I feel that it is safe to presume that there are, even if issues of fact are not raised in these answers it would occur to me, if I may suggest to the Tribunal, that this whole matter might be heard on Tuesday, the 29th, and that we might notify the respondents, Dr. Marx and Frau Huppertz, that this matter will be heard on Tuesday, the 29th of July, and that on that day the proceedings in this Court should suspend. There seems to be no occasion for the defendants to be present. I have submitted a formal order to the Tribunal, assuming that there were issues of fact. I believe that is valid. The Tribunal probably doesn't wish to act on that until it has seen a translation of the responses.
THE PRESIDENT: I might say that we have had opportunity to learn a sufficient amount of the answer filed in German by Karin Huppertz to know that issues of fact are presented.
MR. LaFOLLETTE: I am advised -- I think I can say accurately from what I have heard from the Secretary General -- enough is now learned that issues of fact are presented in the response of Dr. Marx.
THE PRESIDENT: It is called to my attention that you have provided in the formal order that the issues of fact shall be heard on Tuesday, July 29th, and that the defendants, and each of them, shall be present at and shall attend such hearing. You refer to the defendants in the contempt proceedings, and not the defendants in this case.