Generalized since January 1, 2023, the departmental criminal courts judge crimes punishable by 15 to 20 years of criminal imprisonment. Cases hitherto subject to assizes.
In May 2020, still a lawyer, Eric Dupond-Moretti defended the principle of departmental criminal courts, seeing “the death of the assize court” and the disappearance of the “popular jury of assizes”. After a three-year experiment, these new courts, made up of five professional magistrates and responsible for judging crimes punishable by 15 to 20 years in prison, have now been generalized since January 1.
“Do you want in the name of a statement that was mine in the past, I come to demolish something that I am told is working”, justified himself at the beginning of the month the Minister of Justice on France Inter.
For several weeks, it has been the opponents of these criminal courts who have been using the arguments of Eric Dupond-Moretti the lawyer against the Keeper of the Seals Eric Dupond-Moretti. A website “Save the Assizes” has just been launched, as well as a petition on the platform of the Senate for the “preservation of the popular jury of the assize court and the abandonment of the departmental criminal courts”.
If it collects at least 100,000 signatures in six months, it will be sent to the Conference of Presidents, which brings together the president of the institution, the vice-presidents, the presidents of political groups and the various committees. If this body takes action, it can register the petition for parliamentary debate. At the same time, the EELV deputy Francesca Pasquini tabled a bill “aiming to preserve the jury of assizes”. But what are the opponents actually accusing?
The calling into question of a democratic principle
“Justice is done in the name of the people, by the people.” This motto is now threatened by the generalization of departmental criminal courts, believe the detractors of this new jurisdiction, who simply ask for it to be abandoned.
“The popular jurors are an important democratic heritage”, pleads with BFMTV.com Benjamin Fiorini, lecturer in private law and criminal sciences at the University of Paris-8, at the origin of the petition. “It is a democratic instrument.”
Beyond the philosophical aspect, many voices fear a strengthening of the remoteness and mistrust of the French towards their justice. Thus, rape cases will no longer be judged by popular jurors but by professional magistrates. An aberration for many lawyers who believe that citizens must precisely seize these social issues.
“The assize courts are an instrument of humanity of justice”, insists Benjamin Fiorini. “It’s the moment when we take the time to explain the procedure. It’s a moment when we establish a judicial truth of the crimes.”
Faced with this criticism, Eric Dupond-Moretti recalls that “if the litigant is not happy with a decision rendered by the criminal court, he appeals and on appeal he finds the traditional assize court”, composed of a popular jury.
The fear of a total abolition of popular jurors
“Tomorrow, I, the bicentenary urn of Coutances, will be stored at the bottom of a cabinet in this courthouse like an old relic that will hardly be taken out.” These words are those of the President of the Court of Assizes of Coutances, quoted by Actu.fr. The magistrate, clearly opposed to the criminal courts, engaged in a symbolic exercise in December by lending his voice to the ballot box from which the names of the jurors are drawn by lot.
With this generalization of criminal courts, professionals fear the eventual abolition of popular jurors and assize courts where the oral nature of the debates presides. “The participation of the jurors becomes minority for the crimes”, insists Benjamin Fiorini, who estimates at 60% the number of criminal files which now return to the criminal courts.
“It’s a policy of small steps,” laments Me Emmanuel Le Miere. “We destroy the system that exists, we undermine the foundations of this system, we can only see that ultimately it does not work.”
In Coutances, cases liable to assizes are mostly rape cases. “Serious criminality which exceeds 20 years of criminal imprisonment is, fortunately, quite rare with us”, notes the former president of the Bar Me Le Miere. “This means that we will organize a sitting session for one case, two at most.”
However, organizing an assize session takes time and is expensive, with the drawing of jurors, their training day, the visit of a prison and their remuneration. In the long term, the lawyer fears that the assize courts will become regional in certain territories. “If we start to sacrifice jurors in so many cases in the name of inventory management, it means we are going to eliminate them everywhere”, even believes Benjamin Fiorini.
“I have strengthened popular sovereignty”, defends the Minister of Justice, sweeping away the arguments put forward to advance the abolition of popular jurors.
“I demanded that to condemn there be an additional juror’s vote because this expression of popular sovereignty had lost a lot of meaning since because we could condemn without having obtained a majority of jurors, I restored that”, explains- he.
The impact on correctionalization of rape limited
One of the priority objectives of this reform, put forward by the Chancellery, is to avoid the correctionalization of rapes, namely that certain cases are tried before a criminal court in order to be processed more quickly.
“There was a first report from the Directorate of Criminal Affairs and Pardons, there was a parliamentary report conducted by two lawyers, what does this report say? That it works well, that it goes faster , that above all it makes it possible to settle the question of the correctionalization that we inflicted on the victims”, assured Eric Dupond-Moretti last week on France Inter.
The committee of the mission of evaluation and follow-up of the departmental criminal courts interviewed four jurisdictions, while the device has been tested for three years. “Available statistics do not show any real change in the level of correctionalization of cases”, notes the mission in its report after questioning the Court of Appeal of the Ardennes, Rouen and Cayenne. Sentiment shared by the French Association of Instructing Magistrates which notes that there is no “significant influence”.
Thus, the committee, made up mainly of legal actors, believes that a study should be carried out solely on this point, underlining the difficulty of evaluating the positive or negative impact on the de-correction of rape cases.
The fear of “slaughtering justice”
The other objective of the reform of the departmental criminal courts is to try cases more quickly, where many citizens denounce the slowness of justice. According to the reform evaluation and monitoring committee, the time saved is 12% on average.
The law has set a hearing deadline of six months before the criminal courts, “untenable” for the committee, which recommends that this deadline be set at 9 months. A duration approaching that observed before the Assize Courts. “We are going to sacrifice the popular jurors to gain 15 days of hearing”, laments Benjamin Fiorini.
“The justice of the assize court, quality justice, we are going to make it a slaughter justice, like that rendered before the criminal courts”, reproaches on France Blue Me Pierre Dunac, the president of the bar of Toulouse.
Like almost all the bars of France, it adopted a motion to preserve the juror of assizes.
Eric Dupond-Moretti notes that the experimentation of the criminal courts for three years has made it possible to reveal “peaceful debates”. “All of the people heard by the committee, including those most critical of the departmental criminal courts, agreed to recognize that, within the framework of the experiment, the principles of oral debate and contradictory had been respected”, concludes the follow-up mission of these new jurisdictions.
A costly mechanism in terms of human resources
The Keeper of the Seals announced a budget of 11 billion euros by 2027. An unprecedented increase in the Justice budget which should in particular make it possible to recruit 10,000 civil servants, including 1,500 magistrates to support a profession that is out of breath, overwhelmed by the workload.
And it is in particular this situation which worries the opponents of the reform providing for the generalization of criminal courts. These courts are made up of five professional magistrates when the assize courts have three. Their generalization therefore imposes more magistrates available, more magistrates who do not work on their files.
“The generalization of criminal courts is closely linked to the question of human resources and is conditional (…) on a significant strengthening of human resources”, notes the monitoring and evaluation mission.
The critics of this reform fear that for lack of available magistrates, we will go from five magistrates in the criminal courts to three and then to only one.
“The next two promotions of the National School of the Judiciary, it is an increase of more than 81% of the auditors of justice. There are seven ways of access to be a magistrate, we will simplify to allow other professions to become magistrates, including lawyers”, wants to reassure Eric Dupond-Moretti.
