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__NOTOC__ The Doctors' Trial (or, officially, '''''United States of America v. Karl Brandt, et al.''''') was the first of 12 trials for War Crime s that the United States authorities held in their occupation zone in Nuremberg , Germany after the end of World War II . These twelve trials were all held before U.S. military courts, not before the International Military Tribunal , but took place in the same rooms. The twelve U.S. trials are collectively known as the " Subsequent Nuremberg Trials " or, more formally, as the "Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals" (NMT). The 23 defendants were all medical doctors and were accused of having been involved in Nazi Human Experimentation . The judges in this case, heard before Military Tribunal I, were Walter B. Beals (presiding judge) from Washington , Harold L. Sebring from Florida , and Johnson T. Crawford from Oklahoma , and Victor T. Swearingen , a former special assistant to the Attorney General of the United States, as an alternate judge. The Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution was Telford Taylor , the chief prosecutor in this case was James M. McHaney . The Indictment was filed on October 25 , 1946 ; the trial lasted from December 9 that year until August 20 , 1947 . Of the 23 defendants, five were acquitted, and seven received death sentences, the remaining received prison sentences ranging from 10 years to lifetime imprisonment. INDICTMENT The accused faced four charges: #Conspiracy to commit War Crime s and Crimes Against Humanity as described in counts 2 and 3; #War crimes: performing medical experiments without the subjects' consent on prisoners of war and civilians of occupied countries, as well as participation in the mass-murder of Concentration Camp inmates. #Crimes against humanity: committing crimes described under count 2 also on German nationals. #Membership in a criminal organization, the SS . The SS had been declared a criminal organization previously by the IMT . All defendants pleaded "not guilty". The tribunal largely dropped count 1, stating that the charge was beyond its jurisdiction. DEFENDANTS I — Indicted '''G''' — Indicted and found guilty Those sentenced to death were hanged on June 2 , 1948 in Landsberg Prison , Bavaria . Generally, the difference between a prison term and the death sentence was membership in "an organization declared criminal by the judgement of the International Military Tribunal" — namely the SS . SEE ALSO
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