Since 2019, justice has been experimenting with a new body: the departmental criminal court. It looks like an Assize Court with one exception. Here, no popular jury, it is five professional magistrates who render their verdict. Another particularity, only crimes punishable by a maximum of 20 years’ imprisonment are tried. In other words, mostly rapes.
“These courts were created essentially to relieve the courts of assizes, which are absolutely saturated at the moment”
Laetitia Ohnonaon franceinfo
“You have to wait three or four years, sometimes seven years in some jurisdictions, between the complaint and the trial. With the criminal courts, it is reduced by two to three times. So you can have a trial after a year or 18 months. On that side, it’s progress. The second objective is to reduce correctionalizations. We see cases arriving in criminal court that would never have gone to the Assizes, for example digital rape. We’re forgetting the penetration element a little bit and we’re going to spend it in correctional. And these are very short and very fast hearings, “ explains on franceinfo Laëtitia Ohnona, the director of the documentary Criminal courts broadcast Wednesday, June 1 at 8:30 p.m. on LCP-La Chaîne Parlementaire.
On the occasion of experimenting with a new judicial body, the director @ohnonalaetitia was able to film an entire incest trial in Caen, Calvados.
[INÉDIT] Tonight at 8:30 p.m. “Criminal Courts” in #DebateDoc on LCP
CC @jpgratien pic.twitter.com/q6nWwUkUse
—LCP (@LCP) June 1, 2022
This experiment will be generalized throughout the territory on January 1, 2023. For the first time, a camera has been authorized to film a hearing before a criminal court, that of Caen. Laëtitia Ohnona was able to film a trial for incest.
A seven-year-old boy accuses his father of raping him. The words are raw and difficult to hear: “I really thank the parliamentary channel LCP for following me on this. They asked absolutely nothing in terms of watering down the remarks. Because incest is not a concept. These are very harsh words. “, very painful acts. It’s a really special suffering. And I think we have to stop making it just a kind of abstraction and see what it really means for the civil parties”, concludes Laëtitia Ohnona.