The dead aren't always excused from trial

JIM HEINTZ Associated Press Published:

MOSCOW (AP) -- Sergei Magnitsky died more than three years ago in a Russian jail but authorities are moving to put him on trial in a Russian court. The whistle-blowing lawyer died in 2009 after being arrested on charges of tax fraud -- the same fraud in which he alleged that Interior Ministry officials had a hand.


Here's a look at other posthumous trials and actions.






The teenage French peasant girl who claimed divine guidance and led the French army to victories in Hundred Years War was tried for heresy and burned at the stake in 1431. But a quarter-century later, Pope Callixtus III ordered a new trial after requests by Joan's mother and a French official. The proceedings described her as a martyr and said she was falsely convicted. She was canonized as a saint in 1920.


As a towering figure in 17th century England, Cromwell attracted wide enmity -- signing the death warrant for King Charles I, taking harsh measures against Catholics and demonstrating brutal military brilliance. The resentment was such that although he never faced trial dead or alive, he did suffer a posthumous "execution." In 1661, after royalists returned to power, Cromwell's corpse was exhumed and decapitated, and his head was displayed on a pole for years.


Bormann, the personal secretary to Adolf Hitler, was tried in absentia at the Nuremberg tribunal and sentenced to death -- which in the end proved to be superfluous. At the time of the 1946 trial, the whereabouts of the powerful Nazi official were unknown -- and for decades after the war he was considered one of the most-wanted Nazi war criminals.

