Leonidas “Leon” Jaworski (September 19, 1905 â December 9, 1982) was an American attorney and law professor who served as the second special prosecutor during the Watergate Scandal. He was appointed to that position on November 1, 1973, soon after the Saturday Night Massacre of October 19â20, 1973, which included the dismissal of his predecessor Archibald Cox.
During World War II, Jaworski served in the United States Army’s judge advocate general’s office, reaching the rank of colonel. He led the prosecution in multiple cases, including the Johannes Kunze murder trial, where five German prisoners of war were accused of beating a fellow prisoner to death for being a “traitor”.
After the war, Jaworski served as a war crimes prosecutor in Germany. He was involved in a case where eleven German civilians were accused of murdering six American airmen forced down over Germany in the Rüsselsheim massacre, and a case involving people who were complicit in mass murder at the Hadamar Euthanasia Centre. However, Jaworski declined to participate in the Nuremberg Trials on the grounds that the prosecution there was based on laws that did not exist at the time of the culpable acts.
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