The French judicial system. Exit Napoleon

Date: 11/02/06

A miscarriage of justice calls an entire system into question

IT HAS been a landmark case in French judicial history in more ways than one. Since mid-January, a parliamentary inquiry has been studying one of the country's biggest post-war miscarriages of justice: how six innocent people, jailed for years in connection with a paedophile ring, were acquitted on appeal only last December, after it turned out that key evidence against them had been made up; and how seven other innocents spent months behind bars. The testimony of the acquitted has been televised live, gripping the public. This week, national TV channels cleared their schedules to broadcast the testimony of Fabrice Burgaud, the lead investigating judge in the case.

The affair began in 2000, when social workers suspected sexual abuse of children in Outreau, a suburb of Boulogne-sur-Mer in northern France. The following year (when neighbouring Belgium was being rocked by the trial of a serial rapist and murderer, Marc Dutroux), a judicial investigation into a suspected paedophile ring was opened, led by Mr Burgaud. Some 20 children were identified as victims, including those of three of the couples charged.

At the trial, in 2004, the central evidence was testimony by one of the accused, Myriam Delay, as well as by various children. Seven of the 17 accused were acquitted, after serving months of pre-trial detention. Of the ten found guilty, only four--including Mrs Delay--remain behind bars today, six having been acquitted on appeal in December. The stories told by the acquitted on television have been devastating: marriages wrecked, children taken into care, jobs lost, reputations in tatters. An 18th accused committed suicide in prison in 2002. A nervous Mr Burgaud, meanwhile, said this week that he had done his job "in all honesty".

France has been shaken by what has become known as l'affaire d'Outreau. President Jacques Chirac made an unprecedented apology to the acquitted. Already, in 2004, Dominique Perben, then justice minister, had apologised to the first group of innocents. At a time when an introspective France is feeling uncertain about itself in many other respects--about Europe, about globalisation, about Islam--its judicial system is now under the spotlight too.

Many questions are being raised. How could the case have been mounted on such flimsy evidence? Why were there no safeguards that could have stopped it from going as far as it did? Do France's investigating judges have too many wide-ranging powers? Are they given too much responsibility too young? (Mr Burgaud was 29 when he took on the Outreau case.) Should they act single-handedly in sensitive cases? Should suspects' access to the defence be strengthened? Should an investigating judge's right to put suspects under official investigation, and in provisional detention, be curtailed? Should the position itself be abolished?

Pascal Clement, the justice minister, has promised reforms after the parliamentary inquiry's final report is submitted, probably in May or June. But it is unclear how far he will go. Jean-Francois Burgelin, a retired top judge who has written widely about judicial reform, told Le Figaro this week that France needed to adopt elements of the "accusatorial" system--in which there are three distinct roles of prosecutor, defence and judge--but "without going all the way to Anglo-Saxon excess." The French consider that the Anglo-American system is too costly to the state, and also that it discriminates against the poor. Even its critics, though, agree that France's judicial methods need to change. "The Napoleonic system", declares Mr Burgelin, "has had its day."

A major miscarriage of justice has called the entire French system of justice into question.