Alexandre Humbert Dupalais is a lawyer.
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The Valence Criminal Court has just handed down the conviction of five ultra-right activists who demonstrated on November 25, 2023 in the streets of Romans-sur-Isère after the brutal murder of young Thomas on November 19, in Crépol.
The lawyer that I am can only welcome the speed of our justice.
However, I am surprised that, at the same time, the perpetrators of this murder have still not been tried, or even even identified.
However, let's not be too harsh, it's all a question of priority for a judicial system that budgetary constraints force to choose.
For the moment, the priority of our justice was therefore to judge, not the murderers of Thomas, but the demonstrators who were outraged by this murder.
Vehement indignation, sometimes excessive – but what are these excesses in the face of the murder of a teenager with a knife on the evening of a musette ball?
Also read “Change your speech on Crépol or I will carry out an attack”: the mayor of Romans-sur-Isère threatened again
Because these are not symbolic sentences which have just been pronounced, far from it, but prison sentences, five months suspended, against five young people with clean criminal records, and who will now have a sword of Damocles above them. of their heads, and a locker preventing them from exercising many professions.
Furthermore, six other of these demonstrators, tried in immediate appearance, were sentenced to – incomprehensible – sentences of six to ten months in prison: they thus spent Christmas behind bars.
But what could have at least partly motivated this extreme severity?
The fact that the culprits would be ultra-right activists.
This is despite the fact that such an affiliation – it should be remembered – should not normally, in a rule of law, be taken into account in the assessment of their actions and in that of the quantum of their sentences.
Unless we note the return of crimes of opinion.
Which we are not far from.
These convictions surprise the jurist – and the attentive citizen – all the more because they offer a striking contrast, to say the least, with other recent decisions.
Thus, for comparison, the thirty-year-old Tunisian under OQTF (…) who entered a nursery school in Paris on February 5, armed with two cutter blades, shouting “children
, children
”, left free from his police custody, the courts having not deemed it appropriate even to keep him in pre-trial detention.
However, it was only thanks to the rapid intervention of a parent, a police officer, that we perhaps avoided reliving the nightmare of the Ozar Hatorah school in Toulouse...
This contrast is the sign of a justice system that is drifting, and which seems a little more disconnected every day from the concerns, anxieties and priorities of the French people, in whose name, however, it continues to speak out.
Camille Pascal
I have no doubt, obviously, that this would-be assassin will willingly attend his hearing scheduled for June 27, thus honoring the blind trust of French justice.
For those who believe in Heaven, all they have to do is pray that a tragedy does not occur between now and then.
Another example of this astonishing contrast – among dozens of daily examples – was the Evry court on February 13, before which a Congolese national appeared for the gratuitous and particularly savage attack on a father who will remain disfigured as a result. life, sentenced the perpetrator to a suspended prison sentence of six months.
And as if this leniency was not enough, the Justice decided to "do an additional favor" for the attacker, by not registering, at his request, this conviction in his criminal record, in order to help him renew without difficulty with his residence permit.
Delicate attention, which did not benefit the victim who had unsuccessfully requested a removal measure so as not to encounter her tormentor again.
This contrast is the sign of a justice system that is drifting, and which seems a little more disconnected every day from the concerns, anxieties and priorities of the French people, in whose name, however, it continues to speak out.
A gap that the progressive disappearance of popular juries – defended, against the odds, by a Minister of Justice who nevertheless owes them to being what he has become – only widens a little further.
Also read: Crépol or the psychology of ultraviolent packs
These popular juries indeed allow the presence, not only symbolic, but active and decision-making, of the Sovereign People, at the heart of the work of justice.
It is a guarantee of sovereignty for citizens, but it is also a guarantee for litigants, judged by their peers.
This revolutionary heritage – curiously fought by the extreme left – also allows justice to evolve at the same time as society by being “in touch” with the latter: this is because the assize juries acquitted too many often in the eyes of the legislator the accused that abortion had been taken from them, in 1923, for the benefit of the criminal courts.
It was not until 1975 and the Veil law that the intuition of these popular juries became the law of the Republic.
Today, are Justice and the State once again afraid of the People, in the violence of their reactions as well as in the expression of their will?
This was a good intuition of President Sarkozy who in his time implemented the generalization of popular juries, not only in the assize courts judging crimes but also in "everyday" criminal courts, to associate as closely as possible citizens to their justice and reduce this distrust.
Common sense measure, like the minimum sentences, which François Hollande's left obviously hastened to remove as soon as he came to power.
It is urgent to return to it and to stop moving the sovereign people ever further away from their Justice.
Otherwise, it is to be feared that these exasperated people will one day decide to take justice into their own hands, this time provoking not simple demonstrations but an earthquake that no court will be able to control.