Courts and criminal proceedings

English attaches every charge with the same small word: accused of fraud, convicted of theft, acquitted of arson. German splits them. The verbs that fasten an offence onto a person put the offence in the genitive, with no preposition at all: Der Mann wurde des Totschlags angeklagt, eine DNA-Spur überführte ihn des Einbruchs, die Kammer sprach sie des Betrugs schuldig, and a witness who lies on oath macht sich des Meineids schuldig. The verb that takes the charge away normally does not join them. Freisprechen uses von and names the accusation rather than the crime: Das Landgericht sprach ihn vom Vorwurf der Brandstiftung frei. In conversation and in much of the press wegen is steadily replacing the bare genitive, wegen Totschlags angeklagt, but in a judgment, an indictment or a court report the genitive is still what you will read, and turning every “of” into von gets exactly one of the verbs right.