Know Hitler's murder law that still exists in Germany

New Delhi: It's been 69 years since the Third Reich in Germany ended, but the legacy remains.One of the draconian laws of the Nazi Germany still exists in the country.The murder law, a surviving statute from 1941 means that women who kill their abusive husbands are more likely to be jailed for murder than husbands who beat their wives to death. Also this means that a man, who beats his wife over many years, finally killing her, is less likely to be convicted of murder, with a mandatory life sentence, than to be convicted of manslaughter, which may mean only five years in jail. This law means that killing a person who does not expect it must be murder.The argument is that there was nothing ‘clever' or ‘deceitful' about the killing - it was frontal and direct and might have been expected. Thus, the Nazi law favors the strong who murdered the weak.Statistics show that battered women were more often convicted of murder than violent men.After the unification of Germany in 1990, the murder law still remains in the constitution. In the penal code concerning murder, somebody is guilty of murder but not manslaughter if he abuses the victim's defenselessness, abusing the fact that the victim is not aware of any attackMany lawyers have fought to change the present law.There was also one case that caused huge uproar and caught media attention. The case of Marianne Bachmeier, is worth mentioning. Her 7 year old daughter was abducted, raped and murdered in Germany in May, 1980. A year later, Bachmeier, smuggled a pistol into the courtroom and appearing very calm and composed open fire on the predator in the courtroom killing him and surrendered. Such is the German legal system that it declared it a murder as the death of the victim was unexpected. The case had created a national uproar and many movies were also made.