Paris, From the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 2

by William Walton

The Cour d'Appel, at the Palais de Justice, includes in its jurisdiction the departments of the Aube, Eure-et-Loir, Marne, Seine-et-Marne, Seine-et-Oise, Yonne-et-Seine. In all cases, the decrees are rendered by the magistrates deliberating, in groups of some odd number,—at least five, including the President. In all civil and commercial cases, appeal can be made from all decisions rendered by the tribunals of the arrondissements or of commerce, by referees, judicial reports upon cases in litigation in which the amount involved exceeds fifteen hundred francs of injury to the person or to personal property, or sixty francs of revenue from real estate.

This court is composed of a first President, nine Presidents of Chambres, and sixty-two Conseillers, divided among nine Chambres, of which seven decide upon civil and commercial appeals, one upon appeals Correctionnels, and the ninth is the Chambre des Mises en Accusation, before which are brought criminal cases after they have passed the stage of preliminary examination. The Parquet connected with the Cour d'Appel consists of the Procureur général, seven Avocats généraux, and eleven Substituts of the Procureur général. The Cour d'Appel sits in judgment as a court of first and last resort in all cases of misdemeanors, involving a legal penalty, committed by the magistrates of the Cour de Cassation, of the Cour d'Appel, of the Tribunal de Première Instance, by the Juges de Paix, the Préfets, the Grand Officers of the Legion of Honor, generals, archbishops, bishops, presidents of Consistoires in the Protestant and Jewish organizations.

In each department of France there is a Cour d'Assises to try those individuals who are sent before it by the Chambre des Mises en Accusation of the Cour d'Appel. In the departments generally these courts sit every three months, and more frequently if occasion requires. The Cour d'Assises of the department of the Seine holds its sittings every day, in the Palais de Justice. This court consists, first, of three Conseillers of the Cour d'Appel, the first sitting as President, the two others as Assesseurs, designated every three months, the President by the Garde des Sceaux, the Assesseurs by the first President; second, of a representative of the Ministère Public, selected among the Avocats généraux or the Substitutes of the Procureur général; third, of a Greffier; fourth, of a jury composed of twelve citizens selected by lot by the President from the list of thirty-six jures designated for the session. After the examination of the accused, the depositions of the witnesses, the Réquisitoire of the Ministère Public and the presentation of the defence, the jury retires to deliberate upon the probable guilt of the prisoner and the extenuating circumstances. When the jurors have agreed upon their verdict, the President causes the prisoner to be brought back into court, the Greffier reads to him the conclusion of the jury, and the court pronounces his acquittal, or sentences him to the penalty due the crime of which he has just been convicted, even when this penalty is only a matter of police regulation.

The decision of the jury is supposed to be final, but when a prisoner is found guilty and the court is convinced that the jury is entirely in error, it may set the judgment aside and postpone the case to another session. Against the sentence of the court, appeal may be made to the Cour de Cassation. The Cour d'Assises exercises full jurisdiction in all cases criminal, correctionnelle, or of the Simple Police, excepting in the case of some special law. It takes cognizance, moreover, of actions qualified as crimes, of actions qualified as misdemeanors which a special law places under its jurisdiction,—misdemeanors committed during its sessions, political misdemeanors and those of the press, excepting offences against the public morality and slander, or insults offered to individuals, which all come before the Tribunal Correctionnel.

One of the oldest and most characteristic features of the French administration of justice, the juge d'instruction, has but recently disappeared. The very extensive powers of this magistrate, but vaguely defined by law and custom, lent themselves readily to the abuses which undoubtedly constituted a grave defect in the criminal jurisprudence of the nation. To him were confided all the details of the preliminary investigation of a crime and the detection of the criminal, the seeking for clues, the right of search, of arrest of any suspected characters, of summoning witnesses and experts, of interrogating the accused, and—but too generally—of wresting a confession from him by any means that might present themselves. One of the methods employed was the ostentatious consultation before him of a blank memorandum which, the accused was given to understand, contained the complete avowal of a confederate. In the famous affaire Wilson of a few years ago, concerning the alleged sale of decorations of the Legion of Honor, M. Vigneau, the official charged with this investigation, telephoned to one of these purchasers of red ribbons in the assumed character of M. Wilson. These irregular practices, however, it is asserted, were mostly practised by younger and more inexperienced Juges d'Instruction, and were greatly disapproved by the graver and older magistrates. The accused—who not infrequently would declare subsequently that the statements which he was reported to have made by the curieux, in thieves' slang, were but a distorted version of his words—was considered to have an additional security in the presence of the magistrate's greffier, or clerk, who took down his testimony, and in the fact that he himself need not sign this statement if he considered it inexact.

It was recognized that the qualities, physical, moral, and mental, possessed by a truly able and upright Juge d'Instruction were necessarily exceptional. He should have a very extensive judicial knowledge and experience, he should be gifted with powers of precision, of observation, of decision, of activity, of patience, and of evenness of temper. He should be affected by nothing, surprised by nothing. His bodily health should be sound, his brain cool, and his digestion excellent. He was liable to be summoned from his bed at any hour of the night to investigate a new crime; and when he entered his cabinet tranquilly at one o'clock in the afternoon, it was possible that a minute afterward he would be leaving it hastily on the trail of a fresh offence against justice. In Paris, these magistrates, twenty-eight in number,—with the exception of two who sat in the Petit Parquet,—occupied the three upper stories of the Palais; in the antechamber of each, under the eye of an attendant, or garçon de bureau, might be found waiting, more or less impatiently, a number of witnesses and persons interested, from all classes of society. In the inner room, before the magistrate seated at his desk, and flanked by his greffier, the prisoner or the suspected criminal, guarded by two soldiers of the Garde Municipale, would be undergoing his examination,—badgered, bullied, cross-examined, threatened, matching his dull and unaccustomed wits against the keener, trained, and experienced ones of the judge, outmatched at every point, and but too frequently failing to demonstrate his innocence which it should have been as much the care of his examiner as his own to demonstrate.

Lowest in the scale of the courts of justice of the capital, but by far the most industrious, is the Tribunal de Simple Police. Before it appear the minor offenders against the law, those whose penalties, when convicted, attain a maximum of fifteen francs, or at the very worst, five days of prison. Usually, however, they range from about a fine of three francs if the culprit appear before the court, to five francs if he be condemned by default. The difference is not sufficiently great, usually, to compensate him for the expenditure of time and trouble in appearing, and he permits Justice to take her course without protest. These offenders are usually hotel-keepers, shopkeepers, cab-drivers, concierges, small proprietors, etc.; their crimes consist in neglecting the proper sweeping of their sidewalks, in shaking a carpet out of a window, in watering a window-plant too copiously, in putting up the shop-shutters too late, in permitting the family dog to go about without collar and muzzle,—crimes usually committed in honest ignorance of the police regulations thus violated. As there exists but one Tribunal de Police for the twenty arrondissements of Paris, we are not surprised to learn that this court is the busiest one in France. The number of offenders who appear before it annually averages from forty-three to forty-five thousand.

But, as it does not sit on Sundays, Mondays, fête-days, and but three days a week during the vacation, the total number of hearings amounts to two hundred and forty annually. This makes nearly two hundred cases for each sitting, and as the sittings last from an hour and a half to three hours, the court has about one minute to devote to each case. To enable it to dispose of them with this rapidity, it classifies the offenders, and tries all those accused of the same offence at once. The Ministère Public announces: "Are accused of violation of the ordinance of police regulating public cabs: Pierre, Paul, Jacques," etc. From time to time, a voice from the audience answers to one of these names: "Present!" This roll-call finished, the Juge de Paix, who has marked on his list the names of the absentees, reads these names again and condemns them all by default to the maximum penalty. Then there is a second roll-call of those who are present. The Ministère Public calls on all those who have anything to say to come forward; two or three of the offenders advance, stammer out some excuses which are scarcely listened to, and this second list is condemned in a lump to the regulation minimum penalty. By this simple process, the forty-five thousand cases are tried in the course of the year.