INTERVIEW
Guest of the show En balade avec on Europe 1 Sunday, the lawyer Éric Dupond-Moretti denounced abuses of the judicial system allowed according to him for health reasons, during the crisis of Covid-19. For the criminal lawyer, "we used the Covid-19 to authorize things that are prohibited and illegal", such as the lengthening of the detention period and the convictions without trial beforehand.
"We hadn't experienced such a situation since 1793"
"To facilitate the task of the judges, the Chancellery [the Ministry of Justice, ed. ] Made it possible, for example, to keep in detention men who were not brought before the judges," he points out first. A very worrying reality according to Éric Dupond-Moretti, who considers that "since 1793 and the law known as of the suspects, one had not known such a situation in France".
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The lawyer takes as an example the case of a man convicted in Marseille. "The correctional court authorized itself to sentence to three years in prison a man who was not presented [before a judge] because of the pandemic, who was not seen by videoconference and who did not been represented by a lawyer, "he said.
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For Éric Dupond-Moretti, this phenomenon testifies to the lack of listening of certain judges vis-à-vis other professionals of the judicial world. "In recent years, I have noticed the emergence of a new breed of judges who are the self-proclaimed guardians of public morals," he denounces. "These people don't like the adversarial and therefore the lawyers".
Need for "oxygen" in prisons
However, the coronavirus led to an "historic" fall in the prison population with almost 13,000 prisoners less in two months. A decline that is good news for Éric Dupond-Moretti. "We have so many people in jail in such inhuman and degrading conditions. We had to get some oxygen," he said, recalling that "the confinement of prisoners is confinement in confinement" .
But according to the lawyer, the conditions of detention in French prisons remain unsatisfactory. During the epidemic, detainees "were notably deprived of a visiting room," he said, because "there was also a risk that the virus would leave prison to contaminate family members".
Amnesty law as a remedy
With even more vigor during this crisis, Éric Dupond-Moretti finally pleaded for an amnesty law. And he is not the only one because calls for this law, an option already rejected by the minister, are increasing. "I would have liked the President of the Republic to return to the royal tradition of presidential pardon or the law of amnesty," asks the lawyer. "This amnesty law is awaited by the detainees" and, according to the criminal lawyer, it would "unclog the prisons".
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He therefore proposes to reduce the prison population by favoring prisoners "at the end of their sentence" who have "not committed serious offenses". Because the situation in prisons is worrying according to Éric Dupond-Moretti. "We are in occupancy rates [of prisons] which are unworthy of France, country of human rights", he protests before sliding that "in terms of detention, we are right better placed than Moldova ".