- Despite the coronavirus epidemic, the courts must continue to operate.
- In Marseille, we are trying to organize ourselves, between calendar constraints and other health constraints.
Scheduled initially in early January, then postponed a few weeks after due to the lawyers' strike, then a third time for this Thursday, April 2, the Jibrayel trial, named after this former Marseille socialist deputy accused of embezzlement, should once again be postponed. The fault this time to the health crisis of the coronavirus, which forces the courts like those of Marseille to completely reorganize, and this in a new way.
Since the confinement, the ballet of lawyers, defendants, journalists, police and curious people marched through the corridors of the Marseilles courts. However, the coronavirus health crisis did not come to sign the complete judgment of Justice, in accordance with the requests of the Keeper of the Seals.
" We work ! "
"Certainly, there are fewer people, concedes the prosecutor of the Republic of Marseille Dominique Laurens. But we are working! As soon as the confinement was decided, Nicole Belloubet ordered the courts closed except for "essential litigation". More specifically, this term includes "correctional hearings for measures of pre-trial detention and judicial review", "immediate appearances", "presentations before the investigating judge and the judge of liberties and detention". This is also the case for the “hearings of the judge responsible for the enforcement of sentences” as well as those of the “children's court and the children's judge” for “emergency management”, or even “the offices of the prosecution”.
"The court is not empty at all," said the public prosecutor. At the floor, we are a team of eleven people. There are also many at the registry level. There are really people. We try to respond to all emergencies. "
A calendar story
The first of these is to completely overhaul the hearing schedule, given the drastic reduction in activity. “Every week, we have two magistrates from the prosecution and the headquarters who will watch all the hearings planned, explains Dominique Laurens. Let's say today there were nine scheduled hearings. The previous week, we examined these hearings and we removed all essential litigation to replace them with a single hearing, so that we have only one hearing per day, except Mondays and Thursdays, where it there are two. "
Hearings for domestic violence are among the priorities decreed by the government at the various public prosecutor's offices. “But we also deal with other disputes, insists Dominique Laurens. We recently had a burglary, for example. And this Wednesday we have an audience of three companies for declarations of cessation of payment. "
Flights of hydroalcoholic gel
Procedures during which we must, however, try to protect everyone's health, while the coronavirus epidemic continues to gain ground in Marseille. "The question of respecting sufficient health security arises," questions Me Yann Arnoux-Pollak, Bâtonnier of Marseille. The problem is that we are in the groping. I am a lawyer, not a scientist. Will the measures that will be taken be sufficient? "
"We put hydroalcoholic gel so that people can wash their hands," says Dominique Laurens. We bring it specifically to the room at the start of the hearing, because by leaving it in front of us, they were stolen from us ... We respect the barrier gestures and the courtrooms allow us to be distant from each other. And for the detainees at the depots, we managed to get soap and hydroalcoholic gel placed. But professionally, neither the magistrates nor the civil servants of the jurisdiction have masks. "
The prosecutor of the Republic of Marseille is already apprehending another problem: the return to normal, which will not be that normal ... "The recovery will be very complicated, predicts Dominique Laurens. We went from five to six criminal hearings a day to one! We will have to reset the mechanics, after at least three months of strikes by lawyers. It's not going to be easy… ”
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