There is only chance that could one day allow you to be a juror during a trial. And that’s what happened to Clémentine Thiebault two years ago. Just installed in Marseille, the journalist and writer receives a letter informing her that she has been chosen by fate to be juror during a trial at the Assizes of Bouches-du-Rhône. For 7 days she is therefore immersed in this universe that she knew little or nothing about. In her book, she therefore decides to recount this rare experience. A story that plunges us behind the scenes of the assizes, also the violence of the case judged: a crime without a corpse. Christian, Alain his father, “retired by the Cotorep”, and Mourad are accused of having ambushed Christophe, known as “Toche”, then of having murdered him in a garage, before getting rid of the body. A terrible crime which the jurors and therefore Clémentine Thiebault are confronted with for a week.
In this rare and precise story, she first evokes the responsibility that falls to a jury juror: “I believe that it is indeed at the same time the concrete reality suddenly as a citizen and as the group of the jury found itself faced with this responsibility on a serious matter, one will say, and I believe that it is also what is at stake in this kind of trial “.
“The sound of handcuffs, of the court”
This is how she evokes the particular atmosphere of a trial at the assizes, the violence of the facts but also those experienced inside the courtroom when the police are obliged to intervene, the deafening noise of handcuffs, voices that carry. The details mentioned plunge us into the heart of the judgment. Scenes which, according to the author, may resemble theater: “When I say it’s theater, I think there is also this feeling that, I think, have all the people who have found themselves in my situation. It is that indeed, justice is very codified and that I think it is an assize trial, there are acts, there are stages. So on that side, yes, there is a theater, but on the other hand, it is not a theater , it’s not a game “.
Any citizen registered on the electoral rolls and over 23 years of age is likely to be called upon to be a juror.
“In your intimate conviction” was released on January 6, at Robert Laffond, the first book in a brand new collection “La Bête Noire”.