## Facts

- Hans Detlef Alexander Tiede, a German citizen, and a co-defendant diverted a Polish LOT airliner and forced it to land at Tempelhof Airport in the U.S. sector of West Berlin.
- U.S. military authorities arrested Tiede and prosecuted him in the United States Court for Berlin, a court created under U.S. occupation authority with criminal jurisdiction in the U.S. sector.
- The prosecution charged Tiede with serious felonies under West German substantive criminal law as adopted for the sector; the proceedings were to follow American criminal procedure.
- The court appointed American defense counsel for Tiede.
- Before trial, Tiede moved for a jury trial.
- The prosecution opposed the motion, contending the Constitution did not apply to the occupation court, aliens had no jury right there, and the matter was committed to the Executive as a political question, including an asserted State Department determination against providing juries.

## Issues

1. Whether the United States Constitution applies to criminal proceedings in the United States Court for Berlin, an occupation court sitting in West Berlin.
2. Whether non-citizen “friendly aliens” prosecuted there for serious offenses have a constitutional right to a jury trial.
3. Whether the applicability of constitutional protections in this setting is a nonjusticiable political question requiring judicial deference to an Executive determination that no jury be provided.

## Decision

- The court granted Tiede’s motion and ordered that the criminal case proceed to trial before a jury.
- The court held that the Constitution constrained the criminal proceedings of the United States Court for Berlin.
- The court held that “friendly aliens” prosecuted for serious offenses in that court were entitled to fundamental constitutional safeguards, including the right to trial by jury.
- The court rejected the claim that constitutional applicability was a political question controlled by the Executive or the State Department.

## Legal Principles

- When the United States elects to prosecute criminal charges through a court exercising U.S. authority, fundamental constitutional limits on criminal adjudication apply even if the court sits outside U.S. territory and is not an Article III court.
- Constitutional criminal-procedure protections extend to “persons” subjected to U.S. criminal process, including non-citizen friendly aliens.
- The Sixth Amendment jury-trial guarantee applies to “serious” criminal offenses tried in an American criminal court.
- Determining whether constitutional protections govern a court’s criminal proceedings is a judicial function; executive foreign-policy preferences cannot direct a court to disregard constitutional requirements in adjudicating individual rights.

## Conclusion

The United States Court for Berlin held that it was bound by the Constitution in criminal prosecutions and that friendly-alien defendants charged with serious felonies were entitled to a jury trial, rejecting Executive-branch claims that occupation or foreign-policy considerations could eliminate that right.


United States v. Tiede, 86 F.R.D. 227 (U.S. Ct. for Berlin 1979)