“Is it worth sacrificing our lives for a justice we’re not even proud of?”

“We shouted, Marie shouted and nothing happened.” These words are those of the colleagues of the judge who died in Nanterre of a heart attack during a trial on Tuesday, October 18. Words spoken before the minute of silence in memory of the 44-year-old magistrate a week later, in the very room where she should have chaired a hearing. From Tarbes to Paris, from Saint-Denis de la Réunion to Montpellier, this minute of silence was observed in many courts of the Hexagon.

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At the Bobigny children’s court (Seine-Saint-Denis) – jurisdiction “on the verge of implosion”says a recent inter-union press release, concerning certain sectors –, juvenile delinquents are judged and care is taken to accompany, even place, children in danger. A lot of hearings are postponed there these days, almost all collegiate ones. Six out of twenty clerk positions are vacant, “not to mention sick leavedeplores Myrtis Vinas-Roudières, specialized judge. We can only understand these fellow clerks and clerks who are experiencing a real burnout. Those who provide collegial hearings sometimes work four evenings a week until 8 p.m. or 9 p.m., not to mention the time spent preparing for these hearings and the work upstream of the judgments.explains the young magistrate. All this while earning barely a few tens of euros more than the Smic at the start of his career.

“Even if they are often self-sacrificing, driven by the desire to work justice for the good of minors, at some point the tension has become too great and they leave.”

Myrtis Vinas-Roudières, specialist judge

at franceinfo

Some clerks resign to join other administrations or the private sector. Others, given their efficiency and their great capacity for work, are recruited by law firms who know their value and offer them better salaries.

In this situation, Myrtis Vinas-Roudieres regrets it, but it is the litigants – here young and vulnerable – who pay the consequences. “There are the offenses that we should be trying these days but that we are sending back to March at the risk of overloading the spring hearings even more. Then there are hearings, interviews in our offices, that the law obliges us, in theory, to lead only in the presence of a clerk and that we lead alone… and I am necessarily less empathetic, less focused on the story of physical or sexual abuse of a child when I have to do in at the same time the note-taking work”breathes the judge. “When there are ten people in my office, all the members of the family, how to take notes properly while leading the debate, without forgetting to remain attentive to the discreet tears of a mother, to the black look that a adult to a child whom he will reproach for talking too much?”she asks herself.

“It’s a justice with less listening, less rigor. It’s a less good justice, whose decisions are necessarily less well accepted by society.”

Myrtis Vinas-Roudières, specialized judge

at franceinfo

The judge speaks, confides in her frustrations but, at the same time, looks at her watch. She knows that she still has to receive several families today, before sitting as assessor for the immediate appearances of the day with major defendants in the afternoon. Whatever their specialty, judges must also regularly ensure attendance at assize trials or in immediate appearance.

In front of the room, where the hearing will possibly end late in the evening, we meet many lawyers, files under their arms. Lawyers who are aware of the difficulties on the other side of the court. Most are empathetic and measure the harmful consequences for their customers on a daily basis. “These understaffing distance the judge a little more from the litigant. They distance the judge from the lawyers. It is becoming more and more difficult to access the judges. They rarely have the time”notes Me Marie Tostivint, lawyer in Noisy-le-Sec (Seine-Saint-Denis) who has been pleading for more than 30 years in Bobigny.

She adds : “There is also the terrible lengthening of judgment times from year to year. Today, it takes six months to have a first appointment for a divorce. In criminal cases, it is not uncommon for offenses to be tried two or three years after the events. The slightest postponement of the hearing at the moment takes us to the end of next year. With such delays, the victims feel that their suffering is not recognized and the defendants remain months, even years, waiting for their trial. This does not allow them to move forward serenely in their lives. Reintegration does not mean much in this situation.

For Seine-Saint-Denis to have a number of magistrates that corresponds to the European average, according to Council of Europe statistics, the number of staff would have to be doubled. Even if justice has seen its budget increase in France by 8% three years in a row, the account is not there. Especially since part of these budget increases goes to the prison administration, and not to the courts.

Albertine Munoz, 34, has been practicing for four years. She is a sentencing judge in Bobigny. And, according to her, this increase in credits is almost imperceptible from the base: “We work like hell, we take it upon ourselves to make up for the shortcomings, but in operating this way for years, we have been slow to highlight the immensity of the needs of justice.” “I wonder and it scares me: given the delay, is it worth sacrificing your time, your health, your life to do justice of which we are not even proud, of which sometimes we have shame, which is often unworthy of citizens? I am a young judge and I have always found the mission of rendering justice among the noblest that exists”comments the magistrate.

“It hurts me to say it but I don’t know if I will practice this profession all my life. I will have to think about protecting myself.”

Me Marie Tostivint, lawyer

at franceinfo

Albertine Munoz and many of her colleagues have planned – something rare in the profession – a day of national mobilization on November 22. A year after the first collective cry of alarm from the judiciary and a month after the death in full hearing of Judge Marie Truchet in Nanterre.