It's a small revolution in justice. A man accused of attempted rape is tried Thursday, September 5 in Caen, not the assizes, but by the very first criminal court, a new jurisdiction to judge crimes without a popular jury.

An experiment in seven departments

No jury draw so to start this trial. "For the first time in France legal proceedings are opening in front of a criminal court. (...) This jurisdiction is composed exclusively of professional magistrates.It will judge the crimes punished of 20 years of imprisonment to the maximum, the court of assizes composed of jurors being she in charge of the crimes punished more severely ", explains the president Jeanne Cheenne.

These criminal courts will mainly judge rapes and armed robberies, about 57% of the cases judged at the assizes. Rare, debates are recorded "given the experimental nature" of the hearing.

The Court of Appeal of Caen has been a candidate to participate in the experiment, which will take place in seven departments. In addition to Calvados, it will be conducted in the Ardennes, Cher, Moselle, Reunion, Seine-Maritime and Yvelines.

A less solemn audience

According to AFP, the hearing is halfway between a sitting court hearing or a criminal court hearing (these courts judge offenses punishable by up to 10 years in prison).

The vocabulary (accused, verdict ...) is the same as that of the Assize Court but without the solemnity of it. The president takes the time to question the accused, to put him in front of his contradictions, to return to certain remarks, but no expert made the trip.

At the sitting, the procedure is oral: the jurors discover the case in all its complexity throughout the trial. There, the magistrates have access to the whole file, which makes it possible to shorten the hearing time.

The accused agreed to appear in the criminal court. "He thought the professionalism of the judges was a very good thing for him," his lawyer Sophie Lechevrel told reporters. "It's going to last a day and it's okay," she added before the trial began.

A criticized instance

Could this new jurisdiction be unfavorable to the accused? This is the debate that runs the professionals of justice since the announcement of the experiment. For the Ministry of Justice and many magistrates, it is a way to have justice faster and more effective, while the Assize courts are engorged and many cases of rape tried in correctional. For penal lawyers, however, they represent a cheap justice and a democratic regression.

The lawyer of the accused remains measured but reassuring: "It is necessary to be vigilant but the lawyers are there for that", assures master Sophie Lechevrel. "I have to make sure that I can express myself as much as possible, that my client can express himself as he wishes."

Céline Parisot, president of the Union Syndicale des magistrats (USM), sees a way to stop a trend that has formed in recent years: the requalification of certain crimes in offense to obtain a faster trial than the courts of seated, often engorged.

"Today it is essentially the rapes that are not judged as a crime, but as a crime.We judge them as sexual assault.It is still not the same thing, already for the victim and then for the same. He is facing a sentence that is obviously less important, so that seems hardly acceptable to us, and we hope that these criminal courts by allowing time to be saved make it possible to judge more rapes, especially as crimes, "she explains. RFI.

An opinion that is not shared by the Judicial Union. Katia Dubreuil, its president, regrets a "rationing measure". "In justice, given the scarcity of resources, from the moment when procedural obstacles are blown up like the principle of orality specific to the assize courts, there is a strong risk that the cases will be judged more quickly and to the detriment of the quality of the judicial debate ", she denounces on Franceinfo.

For Master Daphne Pugliesi, criminal lawyer at the Versailles Bar, these "criminal courts" lead to a "democratic regression because there is more popular jury while they guarantee a certain independence," says she at the micro of Europe 1. The lawyer also denounces the "fiscal goal" of such a reform: "This will allow justice faster but also more expeditious, so much less effective."

The experiment should last three years.

With AFP