JURY SYSTEM IN FRANCE

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXX, Issue 5375, 16 January 1929, Page 1

JURY SYSTEM IN FRANCE

EASY TERMS FOR MURDERERS. EMOTIONS IN COURT. Do you realise that if murderers are constantly being acquitted in France, or sentenced: to short terms of imprisonment, it is England which is partly responsible ? (asks the Paris; correspondent of the London Observer). Yes, for it is from Englajitji that France borrowed the system of trial by jury, and it is that system, entirely foreign, it is argued, to the French temperament, which is allowing so many criminals to go virtually unpunished. In England, the jury system wbrks very well, no doubt. The English are hot an emotional or. a people, like the French, we are told. The; English juryman cares little whether it was an irresistible passion of love or. hate which drove the murderer! to his crime. He remainis unmoved when the prisoner breaks down with a tempest o£ sobs in the dock. He is never c.arr.ied away when the counsel for the defence, in a splendid and beautifully worded peroration, lets his voice break, and the tearp run diown his cheek, as he sweeps all the facts away in a touching picture of the position which the prisoner is feeling so acutely. In England it would be useless for the relatives of a co.untry gentleman who drownec] .his illigitimate child to engage even the most expensive advocate. Such an offence, comparatively negligible as it may be made to appear to a French jury, would never meet with a$ small a punishment as the ten years—liable to be reduced by .half in cas.e of good conduct — which was all that Pierre de Rayssac got recently. In England, however pretty was a woman who shot her husband, a jury would never let her off with five years—equivalent to two and a half —as a French, jury did the other day to Madame Arnaud. CALMNESS OF MME. ARNAUD. To be sure Madame Arnaud nearly ruined her Chances by heartless calm. When the jury, learned that she was powdering .her nose in the police station while her, husband was still bleeding to death on the steps of the Metro, they wavered, and if. the verdict had been given ait that moment, Madame Arnaud might well have been given ten or fifteen years. ' Her splfPQssession during the early part of 1 •the trial was also against her ; but a , hint from her advocate changed all that, and,, on the second l day, her body shook with sobs as she answered the stern questions of the presiding judge ; and these sobs, combined with the judiciously dropped tears of her counsel, s.ec.ured the lighter, sentence. Of course, even French juries are severe sometimes. Recently the Breton butfcher boy who had murdered his 20-year-old xyife jusjt after she hadl given bir,th to a daughter, was sentenced to as much as imprisonment for life; but although feeling ran high, and the jury probably knew that the crowd wanted the man condemned to. death, they insisted ■on finding extenuating circumstances, and braved the Subsequent hisses of the spectators. Now and then the death sentence is actually passed. There are three women in St. Lazare prison awaiting execution. They have beep sleep-

ing in the §ame cell, in the company of other prisoners and of Sisters of Mercy, as the Law directs, and with bright lights over their beds all night, in case they should try to do themselves an injury ; but I doubt whether even they think that they will be executed, for one of them has appealed successfully against beinig, confined in a cell which bears the unlucky number of 13, and is confident that she will be pardoned before the fatal day. BENCH AND BAR. * Not only is the jury system unsuited) to the" French temperament, its critics say, but France, in adopting it, has now learnt to apply it properly. In practice the jury not only determines the' question of guilt of innocence, but virtually fixes th® sentence. it can acquit when there is no question that the crime wap committed. if it convicts it does so by answering a long list of questions presented to. it by the judge. As French law is neatly codified, and punishments are laidi down for every degree of crjnie, the answers to the questions carry with them the amount o,f sentence ; for though it is actually passed by the judge, ihe has no latitude, and the jury know —for he tells them —what sentence their, replies to the s.everal questions will involve. It need hardly be said that the judgep, wh a are behind the scenes, do hot fall ready victims to the emotional eloquence of the advocates —especially as, they have never been advocates themselvep, and! the disproportion between their modest salaries and the large fees of the Bar does not dispose them to, be; tender towards this, Ihighly-pai I profession. However, though the judges may wish to be severe, they are helpless in fa c e of a tenderhearted? jury: and the curious situation has been reached that it is less dangerous to commit a crime than a minor offence. The minor offence will be dealt with by magistrates alone. Thq crime will go to the assizes and come before a jury-