While the police checks are multiplied during this Easter weekend to ensure proper respect for confinement, a question of procedure has enabled a Rennes man to escape the penalty provided for in the event of a repeat offense. His lawyer, Maître Rémi Cassette, tells the microphone of Europe 1 how he obtained the release of his client.

Since the start of confinement decreed to try to stem the coronavirus pandemic, defendants are condemned daily in immediate appearance. Because beyond the fine of 135 euros for unauthorized movement, for two weeks and the implementation of the new offense of reiteration of violation of the rules of containment, it is possible to be sentenced to six months in prison and 3,750 euros fine, in the event that three verbalizations were made in less than thirty days.

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"A file diverted from its legal use"

But this week the courts issued the first acquittals for cases of containment violation. In Rennes, lawyer Maître Rémi Cassette found a procedural question for his client to succeed. "All of the fines that are noted in connection with confinement violations recorded in a very specific file, the Adoc file", he explains.

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The Rennes prosecution appealed

"However, it is a file which was created to store the data of the traffic tickets and the traffic offenses", specifies Maître Cassette. "So that poses a real difficulty since we have a file which is diverted from its legal use so as to come to prosecute the offenders". "The police officer who arrested my client consulted this file. But this proof was obtained illegally since he accessed a file on which the information was stored when it should not have been" , he says.

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The Rennes prosecution has appealed this decision, which has already inspired other lawyers, who could plead the same loophole in the next immediate appearances. In the same register, in Créteil, an accused had simply disputed one of the three verbalizations which he was accused of. In the absence of a report, the prosecutor could not prove that he was the offender. Result: the offense of repetition, which requires three fines in thirty days, was spent.