French justice minister Michel Mercier this week presented before government his bill for a reform of the justice system that will see juries introduced to sentencing in lower criminal courts. Mercier defends the controversial bill, due to begin its passage through the Senate in May, as a means to "better associate the French public with the workings of justice". But it has been sharply attacked by magistrates and the opposition as a populist electoral ploy, and even by members of President Sarkozy's ruling UMP party as a retrograde move that will cripple the functioning of courts. Michel Deléan presents the evidence for the prosecution.
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It was during a television appearance in February that French President Nicolas Sarkozy made clear his intention of rapidly introducing juries into France's criminal courts, where currently verdicts are pronounced by a panel of professional magistrates. This week his justice minister, Michel Mercier, presented before the weekly meeting of government ministers the reform bill setting out a progressive introduction of the juries, beginning in 2012 and estimated to cost 20 million euros.
Sarkozy's comments on TV, during a debate with a public panel, came one month after the kidnap and murder of 18 year-old waitress Laetitia Perrais in Brittany, western France. It was alleged at thetime, not least by Sarkozy himself, that the man arrested and suspected of carrying out the crime, Tony Meilhon, 31, previously convicted of rape and armed robbery, had escaped proper surveillance after bungling by magistrates following his release from prison in 2010.
That was the latest in a series of high-profile cases that have seen magistrates severely criticized by members of government and the president's ruling UMP party for a perceived indulgency towards criminals. Exacerbated by the attacks, magistrates and other justice services staff held a protest strike in February.
Mercier this week described his rapidly drawn-up bill as designed to "better associate the French public with the workings of justice". It has been attacked by opposition parties and magistrates' unions as a populist measure that would create an unequal and slower justice system. Even Jean-Paul Garrand, justice spokesman for Sarkozy's ruling UMP party, warned that the expansion of juries into criminal courts, would overload the system: "Instead of judging 40 cases per day, only two will be judged," he said.
Until now juries serve in France in courts of assizes - cours d'assises- for trials where defendants are accused of exceptional crimes, notably murder, and in corresponding appeal trials, and they are involved in deciding about 2,600 sentences every year.
The reform will see jury members, described as ‘assessors', introduced to criminal courts - tribunaux correctionnels - which judge all sorts of criminal cases where the defendant generally faces a maximum sentence of ten years in prison. The bill allows for between 6,000 and 9,000 new jury members into the criminal courts and who will annually be involved in delivering about 40,000 sentences.
However, no figures back up the suggestion that sentences delivered by magistrates are weak on crime. There are 62,000 people serving prison sentences in France, and another 80,000 sentences are pending execution, largely because of a lack of means to apply them.
"Overall, we are not at all against the idea of associating members of the public with the justice system," commented a spokesman for the left-leaning magistrates' union, le Syndicat de la magistrature, SM. "But the presupposed reasons are unacceptable. They are on a level of bistrot chatter. It is shocking to prepare a reform in the law against magistrates [just] because they are held in suspicion."
Members of the public do already sit on juries, take part in courts concerned with judging minors, and take part in social affairs tribunals; but these are all on quite different conditions to those envisaged by the new reforms.
"In minors' courts, important cases are judged by two assessors and a professional magistrate," explained Odile Barral, a magistrate who previously served 12 years as a judge for minors in the southern city of Toulouse, and who is a member of the SM union. "It works very well, but the big difference with Sarkozy's project is that the assessors are regularly present. They are volunteers, they have an interest in issues regarding children's problems, whether they be teachers, mothers or association workers, and they receive an accreditation. They form a panel, with the specificity of being motivated and quite professional. Furthermore, they receive only a symbolic payment, which is not an income. That's nothing like the random selection and annual week [Editor's note: of duty] that is being talked about today."
Barral underlined that the criminal court has a quite different manner of functioning to those for minors. "In criminal courts, the cases are examined very quickly, the procedure is complex, and lawyers contest procedural details," she said. "Juries would find it difficult to follow. "On top of this, criminal hearings are unable to cope with demand. How could all this be organized? We already have no money left to pay for the costs of the justice system, and even the popular juries are reimbursed late."
According to a 2010 report by the EU's European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice, France lies in 37th position in a table of 43 European countries ranked by the proportion of their state budget spent on their justice institutions. This highlights the question of funding the reform. French assizes courts judge about 3,000 criminal cases every year, and already have difficulty with paying jurors' expenses. In all, some 600,000 criminal trials are yearly held across France's 158 courts, which sit every week.
In assizes courts, which judge serious criminal cases, the jury is composed of nine members of the public who sit alongside three magistrates (in appeal cases, the jury is made up of 12 members of the public, again assisted by three magistrates). Before a trial begins, the jurors, citizens picked at random, are given a half-day's introductory course on relevant legal matters, and occasionally they are taken on a visit to a prison. Increasing numbers of selected jurors try to avoid serving what is an arduous duty, and for which they receive only limited indemnities.
But for those who fulfill the calling, the experience is a rich one. "We meet wonderful people," commented Dominique Coujard, a magistrate who has presided ten years over trials at a Paris assizes court. "I continue to meet up with former jurors years afterwards. Experience shows that jurors are no more repressive than magistrates. Indeed, one should remember that under Vichy1, professional magistrates were introduced alongside assizes juries because there were too many acquittals."
Coujard believed "there would be nothing to fear about having a true popular jury in criminal court proceedings. On the contrary, it is even the best guarantee against magistrates being singled out for criticism." He cited the infamous 2004 ‘Outreau trial', when the case against 10 defendants accused of sexually abusing young children eventually collapsed on appeal, in 2005, after witness statements were revealed to be false. One defendant had by then committed suicide, and all had spent time in prison. The magistrate who led the pre-trial investigation, Fabrice Burgaud, was widely and severely criticized for his lack of competence.
"We saw this in the Outreau affair," said Coujard, "where no-one found it appropriate to criticize the first assizes court verdict. The essence of the assizes jury is that it is the people who decide. An accused cannot be declared guilty if the majority of the jury has not decided so. A true jury for criminal proceedings? I say great. But I sincerely doubt that this is Sarkozy's project. No political figure would dare to do that."
The problem of cost is an acute one. The largest of the magistrates' unions, the moderate Union syndicale des magistrats, the USM, pointed out that former justice minister Rachida Dati had wanted to save costs and speed up the system by reducing the involvement of juries in courts for minors, and that her successor, Michèle Alliot-Marie had also planned a similar move for assizes courts. "Where is the coherence among politicians?" complained Christophe Régnard, president of the USM.
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1: 'Vichy' refers to the collaborationist government under German-occupied France between 1940-1944, based in the central town of Vichy.
English version: Graham Tearse