On the night of January 26, 2020, Boris M., 37, went to the home of Dominique and Gisèle Pelicot, in Mazan, in Vaucluse. Previously drugged by her husband, the sixty-year-old is then sexually assaulted by this employee of a private transport company, in front of Dominique Pelicot’s camera. Four years later, before the Avignon departmental criminal court, the man claims “to have been a victim, like Madame Pelicot, of Dominique Pelicot”, recalled this Tuesday, November 26, one of the two attorneys general, Jean-François Mayet . “In reality, he was content with the situation as presented by Dominique Pelicot, and did not, at any time, request or obtain the consent of Madame Pelicot in view of her condition,” clarified the magistrate, before request twelve years in prison against the thirty-year-old for aggravated rape. The same prison sentence was then requested against Cyril B., 47 years old, heavy goods vehicle driver, who “was well aware that Madame Pelicot should not be woken up” when he penetrated her, and against Thierry P., 54 years old, according to whom Dominique Pelicot “would be the only one responsible for the facts”.
The day before, the maximum sentence of twenty years of criminal imprisonment had been requested by Jean-François Mayet and his colleague Laure Chabaud against Dominique Pelicot, whom the public prosecutor wishes to see “declared guilty of all the facts with which he is accused “. A prison sentence of 17 years was also requested against Jean-Pierre M., the only accused not to be prosecuted for sexual assault against Gisèle Pelicot, but for having “imitated” the process of her husband, by drugging his own wife before raping her “about ten times” in the company of the latter.
Of all the requisitions requested by the prosecution since Tuesday, November 26 for those accused of rape in the context of this trial, none is less than ten years of criminal imprisonment – but all these decisions were taken “with the necessary individualization of the sentence” of the 51 accused, specified Jean-François Mayet. From the start of his requisition, the latter estimated that “the challenge of this trial is to fundamentally change the relationships between men and women”. Jacques Dallest, former prosecutor general of the Grenoble Court of Appeal and general counsel during numerous assize trials – including that of Nordahl Lelandais, in 2022 -, describes for L’Express the way in which magistrates decide on these requisitions, as well as the possible media and societal impact of certain cases in the quantum of penalties requested.
L’Express: During your career, you sat in eleven assize courts, as a public prosecutor or public prosecutor. Can you describe what the attorney general uses, during trials like that of Mazan, to determine the requisitions?
Jacques Dallest: This question is very difficult, since the requisitions depend above all on the personality of the magistrate: if you asked three attorneys general of different ages and experience what sentence they would have requested in this or that case, you would have three different answers. There is a major principle, which is also enshrined in the law, according to which the public prosecutor has freedom of speech during hearings: a young prosecutor will not make demands in the same way as an old attorney general.
It is rare to know in advance what will be required, with the exception of certain obvious facts, for example for the maximum sentence required against Dominique Pelicot for the Mazan trial, in view of the number of testimonies and evidence collected, or for cases like that of Michel Fourniret or Nordahl Lelandais. For the rest, the Advocate General therefore bases himself on his own experience, but also on what the law says: he generally recalls the texts which apply in the case, the maximum penalty incurred, the context in which the The case is located.
Then, there is no basic scale: the only limit is that of the maximum quantum provided for by law. For a domestic crime, for example, the penalty can theoretically range from one year’s imprisonment to life imprisonment. The attorney general will therefore make his requisition based on the personality of the accused, the seriousness of the facts, their persistence over time, the number of victims, the criminal history of the accused, his psychiatric profile, of the attitude he had at the hearing. On the same file, there can therefore be several readings, and this is also how the requisitions can differ at first instance and on appeal.
In a case like that of Mazan, can media pressure impact the requisitions?
This affair has a huge media impact and raises major societal issues. There is therefore, in my opinion and quite obviously, a requirement for greater severity. Since we raise both moral and theoretical questions on the notions of consent and intention, which are sometimes played out outside of material evidence, this affects the content of the indictment. The Advocate General is ultimately obliged to give his opinion, to raise the debate on these important questions, and there can therefore be a notion of “example”, in the sense that the Advocate General can point out that he is there to defend society, that the severity of a sentence can be useful to those who would be tempted to engage in the same excesses, with the aim of punishing, on the one hand, and deterring, on the other hand. It is a way of publicly proclaiming that the law is also a safeguard, which protects possible new victims.
Can the weight of public opinion also have an impact on the decisions of attorneys general?
Obviously, the repercussion that this affair has had in public opinion also constitutes a form of moral pressure for the attorneys general, even if they are supposed to ignore this pressure when they decide on requisitions. We are no longer in the time of the death penalty, when the attorneys general justified their requisitions by evoking the crowd demanding justice, where there was a kind of need to satisfy public vindictiveness… Today, no one talks about the death penalty anymore. public opinion when he makes his requisitions. There can also be, in certain high-profile trials, a certain form of public disappointment. I am thinking, for example, of the Céline Jourdan affair, named after a seven-year-old girl who was raped, tortured and then murdered in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence in 1988. One of the two accused was ultimately acquitted, while public opinion at the time was mostly convinced of his guilt, which led to strong reactions from the family and residents of the region.
Ditto for the case of a young person stabbed to death during a brawl outside a nightclub, in Grenoble, in 2018: the family had questioned the Prime Minister at the time, the case had been heavily publicized, and public opinion would have wanted the three perpetrators to be punished with the maximum sentence, i.e. thirty years of imprisonment. They were ultimately sentenced to 15 years. We must judge the context: in the law, a premeditated crime is punished more than an unpremeditated crime, there are more or less aggravating circumstances, and so on… Every day, there are acquittals or acquittals which make public opinion or certain media scream, but justice is there to condemn individually, based on the facts and what the law says.
Precisely, in a trial like that of Mazan, where we are talking about 51 defendants with different life stories, accusations and backgrounds, how can each sentence be individualized?
I suppose that the two attorneys general agreed in advance to stagger the different criminal responsibilities, depending on the alleged facts. This is their assessment, based on the elements concerning each accused: did they rape one or more times, were they really unaware that the victim was asleep and can it be proven, do they have a criminal record, a worrying profile, etc. It was certainly necessary to agree on distribution keys, as is the case for major trials linked to drug trafficking for example, where we distinguish the chief, the deputy chief and so on. It is also likely that there are, among these 51 accused, requests for appeal, and cases which will therefore be retried subsequently.
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