The departmental criminal courts, which judge crimes punishable by a maximum of 20 years’ imprisonment, are composed solely of professional magistrates. A positive experience for the victims.
When she evokes the trial of her attacker before the departmental criminal court (CCD) of Loire-Atlantique, Sarah feels reassured. “My fear was that the facts were taken personally,” recalls this rape victim. “During a trial before an assize court, depending on the experience of the jurors, their experience, it could have been misinterpreted.”
Now 26, the young woman accepted that her case be judged, on November 30 and December 1, by this new court and not by an assize court, and its popular jury, as it should have been. the case in view of the facts complained of. These CCDs, made up of five professional magistrates, were generalized in January in France, after a period of experimentation.
They are still the subject of criticism from certain legal professionals, who denounce “slaughtering justice”. Minimization of crimes punishable by 15 to 20 years of imprisonment, impoverishment of the role of the citizen in the delivery of justice… The National Consultative Commission on Human Rights (CNCDH) issued a note at the beginning of April in which she “reiterates her fear of seeing, in the long term, the Assize Court disappear”.
“The judges took the time”
In August 2018, Sarah denounced acts of rape during a weekend with friends. After four years of proceedings, his attacker, who has always denied the facts, was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment, including two years suspended.
“I was warned that it would be long,” she explains.
Quickly, Sarah made her personal case a bigger fight. The young woman managed to live her life “as if nothing had happened”. When after two years, he was offered to correct his case, that is to say to reclassify the facts as sexual assault so that they are tried before a criminal court, and therefore more quickly than before a court of seated, she preferred to wait.
“I had already been waiting for two years so I could still wait,” says the young woman. The fact of having been “believed” from the start by the investigators, by the justice system but also by her family and those around her, made the wait easier for her.
When Sarah’s case was heard by the courts, the departmental criminal court had been experienced for two years in Loire-Atlantique. That the case be judged only by five professional magistrates, and not by a popular jury of an assize court, was finally reassuring for the victim.
“My case was word against word,” she admits. “It reassured me when I understood that the hearing was going to be only on factual elements, that there will be little or no subjectivity.” Despite their “cold”, “solemn” attitude, and aware that “the trial necessarily brings the trauma back to life”, she welcomes their attention.
“I found that the magistrates had asked fair, insightful questions,” says Sarah. “They took the time, they peeled things off.”
Similar hearings at the Assize Court
“The experience in Nantes is positive because we have two presidents of criminal courts who are of exceptional quality, who want justice to be done with dignity”, abounds his lawyer Me Anne Bouillon.
For 20 years, the lawyer has specialized in cases concerning violence against women. Most of these cases now go before the departmental criminal court, a generalized jurisdiction throughout the territory since January 1 for crimes punishable up to 20 years in prison.
“It is a managerial measure which has the sole objective of managing flows”, slices the lawyer. “But we must also take into account that justice is an overwhelmed institution. Until the creation of criminal courts, victims were confronted with a violent pitfall, the phenomenon of correctionalization. This reform of criminal courts corrects a perverse effect that never should have existed.”
Even if she regrets the disappearance of the popular jurors, Me Anne Bouillon concedes that a hearing before the criminal court “resembles to be mistaken for a court of assize hearing”. “There are summonses from witnesses, the magistrates bring in experts, let the contradictory express itself”, details the criminal lawyer. This trial is all the more important for the victims, as unlike the prosecution or the accused, they do not have the possibility of appealing the verdict.
Lack of subjectivity?
Seine-Maritime is one of the departments in which the criminal court has been experienced since 2019. We cannot speak of a “botched trial”, greets Me Djamel Merabet, of the Rouen bar. Last October, the lawyer sat on the bench of the civil parties alongside his client, a woman who denounced two rapes and violence committed by her ex-companion in 2013. His file has known three investigating judges different and remained outstanding for several months.
“The floor was given to my client for a very long time during the trial”, supports Me Merabet. “The president took the time to give this word to all the parties. I am very satisfied with the way this file was handled”
The man was sentenced to five years in prison, including three years. A sentence that could have been quite different, because at the time of the requisitions the Advocate General had only requested a suspended prison sentence.
“In the assize court, if you have extremely brilliant lawyers opposite, that can influence the decisions of the jurors”, notes the lawyer for the victim.
In this case, he believes that all “subjectivity could be evacuated in this case” and is pleased that the decision rendered only by professional magistrates is “extremely reasoned in law”. The assessment of the first experiments of the CCD revealed that the rate of acquittal by the CCDs was substantially the same as that of the courts of assizes (approximately 5.5%).
Fear of untenable delays
One of the other objectives put forward by the Chancellery to support the implementation of its reform is to shorten the hearing times, that is to say the time between the end of the investigation and the date of the trial.
The law has set a six-month deadline before the criminal courts, “untenable” for the reform evaluation and monitoring committee, which recommends that it be set at 9 months. A duration approaching that observed before the Assize Courts.
“The idea of saving time is not an achieved objective”, believes Me Anne Bouillon.
“Criminal court hearings can be great legal spaces, as long as we take the time to make them so,” continues the Nantes lawyer. “When we deal with a rape file, we touch on intimacy, on trauma. Imagine that the space for speech is reduced to a trickle, we will miss out on the victim and it would be unfavorable and regrettable for the accused.”
And this is one of the fears of the detractors of the criminal courts: that these favor “a justice of slaughter”, as denounced by Me Pierre Dunac, the president of the bar of Toulouse, on France Bleu. “As soon as the presidents of the criminal court have left, we no longer have any certainty about the course of these hearings”, alert Me Anne Bouillon.
“We cut the last cord”
For Me Laure Boutron-Marmion, specializing in particular in cases of sexual violence, “the risk is that these magistrates, who have had access to the file, focus only on the real nodes” of the case if they are subject to an injunction of yield. “To choose, a victim will prefer to feel listened to exhaustively even if it means reliving the ordeal they have experienced, rather than listening truncated on certain points”, pleads the criminal lawyer.
“The victims want to make sure that the people who will have to judge know everything about the case,” she continues.
The CNCDH recognizes that “certain fears have been lifted”, such as the course of the debate thanks to the work of the magistrates who preside over this court and who “respect the oral nature of the debates and the principle of adversarial proceedings”. But Sarah concedes that the attitude of the magistrates who are there to “do their job” and their more technical questions than those which would have been asked by an assize court jury, gave her “sometimes the impression of being the accused”.
Conversely, the absence of popular jurors raises fears – a criticism brandished by opponents of this generalization of criminal courts – that “the last cord that connects citizens to their justice will be cut”, as Me Boutron deplores – Marmion, but also that we keep them away from cases of sexual violence, in the broad sense.
“It is the subjects of society that question”, insists the criminal lawyer. “They are going to empty the assize courts of their substance, subjects which nevertheless have a great interest in being dealt with by jurors. When you are a juror, you realize the responsibility of convicting a person, this allows these jurors to have a less Manichean view of these cases.”
