The controversy caused by the defense of Gérard Depardieu, knew his meiosis. Beyond the guilt of the actor, that of his lawyer had to be judged? To resume the complaints in particular television of the advice of victims, can a cinema attacker be authorized to be defended by a priest attacker? This is a first, the court judged the affirmative by condemning Gérard Depardieu to pay damages for having caused a prejudice secondary to the complainants due to the excess of aggressiveness and rudeness of his lawyer.
Unfortunately had to be expected. This decision is a continuation of a substantive blade which aims to protect, even overprotecting victims of all kinds and more specifically in sexual matters. Clap of the end therefore possible for the rough criminal hearings where the harshness of the debates leads to violent challenges of the stories.
All justice professionals know that a lawyer with a detestable behavior takes the risk of arouse in magistrates an annoyance reaction that can be felt in the pronounced sanction, even if in practice it is often seen that judges have the wisdom to refuse to make the defendants responsible for the blunders of their advice. Furthermore, it frequently happens that criminal courts take empathy for a person awkwardly defended; Cicero in Speakera long time ago, found that clumsy speakers or in its “inept” terms could rally the compassion of magistrates to their causes precisely because of their execrable behaviors.
A shocking decision
The decision rendered in the Depardieu trial proceeds from the contrary since the latter, ordered to pay damages to the victims for the coarseness of the remarks made by his lawyer, is made debtor of the damage caused. Unusual situation, people tried are no longer in the eyes of the judges the first victims of the blunders of their lawyers but outlet for their faults. Disorder degree of sanction.
This decision is shocking. The correctional hearing is not a boudoir or a worldly lounge, it is by nature a place of violent confrontation because located at the crossroads of passions. There is of course as in a boxing ring of commitment rules, authorized blows, other prohibited, but the hearing in which the criminal trial is held, let us not forget, is the moment when repression or innocence is decided. It is where the most antagonistic currents which can exist, the place where humanity is confused in all its excesses.
Wanting to pasteurize this space of contradiction, to sterilize the passions which necessarily express themselves, to expel the tropisms would amount to taking away its reason for being, that is to say to ban the human. How to judge him if his nature in all his strength and violence are expelled, if he is declared unwanted in the hearing rooms. A halftone and dotted audience, without brilliance, an audience without combat, without struggle, simply defenseless. The anger of courts, the indignation of hearings, the judicial bursts are the fuel of a well rendered justice because they are the burning fire of the confrontation of the oppositions exacerbated by the weight of the justice that the judges have precisely the mission of rendering. The nature of the judicial confrontation at the hearing if it wants to be like what it is responsible for solving, must be the place of noisy, disturbing, clumsy or coarse freedom of expression. A place where we have to, where we can say everything, say everything. The space where the intensity of emotions is like the issues; Honor of course but also and often deprivation of freedom.
“” “Judicial bursts are the fuel of a well -rendered justice because they are the burning fire of the confrontation of the oppositions»
Justice is only done when the judge was able to hear everything and appreciate everything. And if a Larsen is heard in the voice of the litigant, he has the power to stop him. We do not buy his deafness or his weakness of the moment by pulling stronger on the ear of the culprit. You have to be worried when a court says it is no longer ready to listen to and try to understand what are the human issues of what is happening before it. Or worse, if he lets in silence to get better then. What would we have thought of the referee of the match Tyson-Holyfield if on June 28, 1997 instead of disqualifying on the field the boxer who had devoured the ear of the other, he had let the match continue to, after the match, sanction him?
It is commonplace that magistrates during stormy criminal hearings are confronted with what are called incidents, that is to say bursts that can degenerate debates because everyone’s tugs are “outrageous”, “humiliating” or “intimidating”. They suspend the hearing, call the Bâtonnier and the situation calms down. It was not the choice of these judges who preferred to let the debates degenerate to then condemn the actor to repair the damage and thus condemn the justice itself for the spectacle that she gave in her worst role.
* Jean-Marc Fedida is a lawyer at the Court