Impregnated by five decades of investigation at the heart of criminal cases, journalist Jacques Pradel is convinced: we must open the debate on the limitation period for blood crimes.
This principle establishes the end of public action in criminal matters beyond a certain period, namely twenty years for adult victims and thirty years for minors, from their majority.
Jacques Pradel and his colleague Christian Porte have launched a petition to demand a debate on this principle of law so that no criminal falls through the cracks.
It has already collected nearly 20,000 signatures.
LE FIGARO. - Why launch this petition with journalist Christian Porte addressed to the President of the Republic and the Minister of Justice?
JACQUES PRADEL. -
Our desire is to open a debate with civil society, professionals from the legal world, magistrates, police officers, lawyers, as well as the political world on the limitation period in our French law.
Without prejudging the outcome of these discussions, we hope that society will consider an extension of the limitation period, or even a total lifting of the limitation period for all blood crimes.
We want to distance ourselves from any ideological positioning and move away from school playground arguments, in order to be able to hear everyone's arguments.
What have the many families of victims you have met during your career told you?
In the context of a disappearance or a murder, it happens that investigators have very little evidence, sometimes not even a body, which of course complicates the search.
But the end of the investigation and the impossibility of one day convicting the person responsible is seen as a real legal pardon offered by the State.
This legal forgiveness is no longer bearable for the victims' families and, beyond that, for society.
This principle of law is experienced as a profound injustice.
Would not the imprescriptibility of blood crimes call into question the scale of seriousness accepted by our society, namely that the crime against humanity is more serious than that committed against a person?
The prescription was put in place in the name of a form of social peace, but it must be understood that this is unacceptable for families.
Furthermore, an extension of the limitation period, or even a lifting of the limitation period for blood crimes, would make it possible to repair the errors of the past.
It happens that investigators, out of conviction or lack of resources, have refused to study all the leads.
In Michel Fourniret's van, only around thirty biological traces were analyzed out of the hundreds taken.
This development would also make it possible to repair another pitfall: when a defendant has been acquitted for lack of proof, but we discover that he is ultimately responsible.
This is particularly the case for the murder of Frédéric Fauvet in 1985 in Marne.
Wasn't the statute of limitations introduced to deal with the withering away of evidence and the limits of human memory?
Historically, prescription was indeed a way of responding to the limits of science.
But now this deadline is no longer in line with the progress of forensic science.
A sample that did not speak thirty years ago can now be analyzed much more precisely.
DNA analyzes as well as the computerization of files make it possible to make much greater cross-references.
Now a DNA trace can speak fifty years later.
It is still necessary, of course, that the seals have been well preserved.
If it has been damaged or destroyed, forensic science cannot perform miracles.
It doesn't solve everything with a magic wand.
Can you tell us about a particular case that led you to question this principle of French law?
The affair of the Fontainebleau fiancés on which Christian Porte and I worked a lot comes directly to mind.
In October 1988, Anne-Sophie Vandamme and Gilles Naudet, 25 years old, disappeared in the famous forest of Seine-et-Marne.
Their bodies were found two months later by hunters.
They were shot and killed.
In 2001, a suspect was tried and later acquitted.
Their parents filed a complaint against X for homicide but the case was finally time-barred in 2011. How many cases have had the same outcome?
Conversely, have other legal enigmas demonstrated that deferring the statute of limitations could make it possible to find the person(s) responsible?
Of course !
In the case of the missing women from Yonne, the conviction of Emile Louis was possible thanks to the intervention of the family's lawyer, Me Gonzalez de Gaspard, who made it possible to relaunch the investigation when it was had been at a standstill for twenty years.
The recent arrest of François Vérove, known as “Le Grêlé”, after 35 years of tracking also shows that we must never despair.
And what about the case of the A10 martyr, whose parents were arrested thirty years after her murder?
Judicial annals are full of cases resolved following an agreement between magistrates and investigators to extend the statute of limitations.
It's a question of human reaction, but shouldn't all business get this same treatment?