The French Judicial System: Summary of a February 2006 Current Event Article

A parliamentary inquiry has been looking into one of France's biggest post-war miscarriages of the justice system. Last December six innocent people were acquitted after they had spent years in prison for being connected with a pedophile ring. The evidence that had put them in jail had been made up. The testimony of those acquitted has been broadcast on live television. This past week, the national TV channels cleared their programming to broadcast the live testimony of Fabrice Burgaud. Burgaud was the lead investigative judge in the case.

It all began in 2000 when social workers suspected sexual abuse of children in Outreau. The following year Burgaud led a judicial investigation into a suspected pedophile ring connected with what was going on in Outreau. All of this was happening at the same time Belgium was holding the trial of Marc Dutroux, a serial rapist and murder. The investigation identified twenty children as victims, including those of three of the couples who were charged. The central evidence in the trail was testimony by Myriam Delay and by various children. Of the seventeen accused, seven were acquitted after serving pre-trial detention for months. Out of the ten who were found guilty, only four remain behind bars today after the six who won their appeal this past December were released.

The stories the acquitted have told on television have been devastating. Many of them have had marriages wrecked, jobs lost, and reputations destroyed. There were actually eighteen people accused but one of them committed suicide in prison. A nervous Burgaud said this past week he had done his job "in all honesty."

President Chirac made an unprecedented apology to the acquitted. This comes after Dominique Perben, then justice minister, apologized to the first group of innocents in 2004. This is all coming at a time when France is uncertain about itself in many areas-about Europe, about Islam, about globalization-now its judicial system is under scrutiny too. Many people are beginning to ask how this case could have mounted on such flimsy evidence? They also want to know why there were no safeguards to stop it from going as far as it did. The power of the investigative judges is also being questioned. Many believe these judges are given too much power at a young age. Burgard was 29 when he took the Outreau case. People are now wondering if the position itself should be abolished.

The justice minister, Pascal Clement, has promised reforms after the final report is submitted regarding the Outreau case. Jean-Francois Burgelin, a retired top judge, has written widely about judicial reform. He said France needed to adopt the elements of the "accusatorial" system. This is a system in which there are three distinct roles of judge, defense, and prosecutor. He went to say this needs to be done "without going all the way to Anglo-Saxon excess." Many French people consider the Anglo-American system to be too costly for the state, and also discriminatory against the poor. That being said, even the critics of the Anglo-American system agree that France's judicial methods need to be changed.

"The French judicial system." The Economist 11-17 Feb. 2006, 48.