There was the case of a 20-year-old homeless woman, brought before the court for stealing from a shop a pair of socks priced 9.5 euros, and who didn’t understand a thing about the legal procedure she was caught up in. The sitting magistrates had no hesitation in handing her a prison sentence, on the basis that it was a repeat offence – she had a previous conviction for stealing socks.
In his posthumously published book Mô, lawyer Jean-Yves Moyart, who was based in Lille, north-east France, recounts not only the cold workings of the justice system but also the human misery that is presented before it. There is the teacher, a man in his fifties, accused of fondling children among his pupils, who admitted to his guilt and to his regrets, and that of the wife who fled her violent husband, and who would discover that he had been raping their children over a period of years.
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There’s also the story of a man, charged with killing his wife, who presented himself to the court with the appearance of a kind person, an ideal husband who wouldn’t hurt a fly. Once the trial was over, he confided the truth to his lawyer. Another was the case of a socially marginalised man accused of acts of barbarity, including torture, against a mentally handicapped victim, and the challenge for his lawyer in attempting to present a human side to him before the jury.
Moyat recounts other cases of those brought before the court for a petty, stupid crime and who will be mechanically and slowly shredded by the system, and the convictions for petty crimes despite an absence of absolute proof, in a snub of the principle of the presumption of innocence.
All of the 20 accounts contained in the 375-page book either directly involved or were witnessed by Moyart in his professional activities in criminal law, which spanned almost 30 years. He writes about them in simple and just terms, with narrative talent, and with a sincere humanity. He also offers a frank account of his fear of failing to properly defend his clients – many of who were beneficiaries of legal aid – and the feeling of terror that all but paralysed him and knotted his guts just before he was to plead their case before court.
Moyart’s clients were the ‘little people’, the socially humble, who he energetically represented with passion. He remained a modest man, at the opposite end of the profession to those, often dubbed “the tenors of the bar”, who represent celebrities, politicians or corporate executives.
Most of the stories contained in the book were first published by Moyart on his longstanding blog, which he presented under the pseudonym of Maître Mô – a humorous formula which uses the title of a lawyer in French, “Maître”, and a phonetic play on the phrase “maître mot”, meaning “the key word”. Thanks to the social media grapevine, the blog posts, which he began in 2008, became increasingly popular, reaching, according to daily Le Monde, an audience of 100,000 by 2011, when they were first published in book form, followed by another print run in 2013.
It was following his death from cancer in February this year, at the age of 53, that his friends brought together this new collection of the blog posts, enriched with previously unpublished extracts. The book offers a greater insight into the French justice system than any of the numerous essays that abound on the subject, and the reader can only be left feeling moved, and angry.
- Mô by Jean-Yves Moyart is published in France by Les Arènes, priced 20 euros.
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- The original French version of this review can be found here.
English version by Graham Tearse