Word: juge
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Preparing the Dossier. But more serious critics assailed the French judicial system itself. Under French law. there is no grand jury; instead, there is the juge d'instruction, whom Balzac called the most powerful man in the Republic. He performs the role of investigating magistrate. His great power is that, on his decision, and his alone, he can put any suspect in jail under "preventive detention'' while he investigates the case and prepares a dossier for the trial. Such "preventive detentions" can last for years...
...juge d'instruction is usually young, inexperienced, so ill-paid that he often has no telephone or typewriter. Originally, magistrates were recruited from men of substance anxious to perform civic duty. Today, the underpaid magistrature has become the refuge of law graduates who fear failure as lawyers, and the juge d'instruction is the lowest rung on the judicial ladder. In the case of Marie Besnard, accused poisoner of 13 relatives and friends, the juge d'instruction was a 26-year-old, newly promoted from clerk, who never visited the scene of the crime, sent...
Judge & Prosecutor. After the juge d'instruction comes a trial before three magistrates. In theory, the chief judge is impartial, explaining the arguments to the jury. In practice, he does not arbitrate, he prosecutes. French judges are generally considered honest and conscientious; the role is forced on them by the system. The chief judge must operate from the dossier prepared by the juge d'instruction, and the dossier is obviously the state's case against the accused. In effect, the chief judge challenges the defense counsel to disprove the dossier; he himself questions the defendant...
...Loudun watched, Léon Besnard's body was disinterred, turned over to a laboratory in Marseille. Within a few days Loudun heard the shocking news. Léon had died of a massive dose of arsenic. In the Palais de Justice in Poitiers, a grim little juge d'instruction asked Marie Besnard how the poison got into her husband. She had no idea; but at least one neighbor seemed to remember that Marie had once suggested arsenic as an easy substitute for divorce...