Magistrates cannot cancel a trial even if the investigation that preceded it dragged on, ruled the Court of Cassation, Wednesday, November 9, after examining the extremely rare cancellation of a vast trial for corruption in 2021 The highest judicial court quashed the annulment of the so-called trial of “La Defense Boiler Room”decided in Nanterre and then confirmed by the Versailles Court of Appeal in 2021.
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The magistrates of Nanterre and then of Versailles feared an unfair trial because of the length of the criminal proceedings which had stretched out over nearly twenty years. According to them, it is impossible to correctly judge the defendants without being able to confront them. However, one of them is almost a century old, another has Parkinson’s and the alleged beneficiary of the corruption scheme, the former senator and mayor of Puteaux, Charles Ceccaldi-Raynaud, has died. They then canceled all the pleadings.
But the Court of Cassation censured their decisions on Wednesday. “Failure to be tried within a reasonable time does not in itself infringe the rights of the defence”, she decreed. Like the public prosecutor’s office which had challenged the annulment decisions, it recalled that the parties had “guarantees” to enable a fair trial to be held, even if the reasonable time limit has been exceeded.
The parts “may themselves influence the duration of the procedure, by requesting that investigations be carried out or that the judicial information be closed”underlined the Court. “They can obtain compensation by engaging the responsibility of the State for the defective functioning of the public service of justice”, she continued. However, the Court recalled that the excessive length of proceedings may “have consequences on the value of evidence as well as on the choice of sentence”.
“The Court of Cassation tells the magistrates that it is necessary to go to a forced march at the trial”regretted Patrice Spinosi, lawyer at the Court of Cassation of two defendants in the boiler room case. “The Court of Cassation did not hear the cry of alarm from the criminal courts”, he lamented. Since the now emblematic case of the boiler room, canceled in January 2021, half a dozen judgments of cancellation have been rendered and were suspended from the judgment of the Court. With regard to the boiler room of the Defense, the file must now return to the Court of Appeal.