Most rape trials in France will be judged without juries under a reform that took effect yesterday despite resistance from judges and lawyers defending the system founded in the 1789 revolution.
To save money and time, all cases involving crimes with maximum sentences of 15 to 20 years in prison are to be tried by courts comprising five judges rather than three judges plus six jurors from the public. Only the most serious crimes are tried by juries in the French system and no civil cases will involve juries.
The new “département criminal courts” have been tested in 15 per cent of the country over the past three years. Nearly 90 per cent of the cases have involved rape, with armed robbery and other violent crimes making up the rest.
The workload of assize courts, the serious crime tribunals with juries, will be halved, leaving more time to handle murder and terrorism cases, according to the government.
Several thousand judges, lawyers, academics and other legal professionals have signed texts critical of the new system on the grounds that the pilot schemes have not shown they are providing a remedy to the heavily overloaded justice system and that the removal of the popular jury is a danger to democracy.
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“The popular jury of the assize court, a legacy of the revolution of 1789, shining symbol of participative democracy, is on its way to extinction,” Benjamin Fiorini, a Paris University law professor, wrote in a text in Le Monde that was backed by hundreds of professionals. Scrapping juries meant breaking the link between the judiciary and ordinary citizens, he said.
The criticism is rejected by Éric Dupond-Moretti, the justice minister, although he had opposed the reform as “the death of the assize court” when he was a defence lawyer, before President Macron appointed him in 2020. “The reform absolutely does not mean the end of popular juries,” he told RTL radio. “If there is an appeal, the case is tried again by the traditional assize court . . . and the most serious crimes are still dealt with at the assizes,” he said.
