Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 10.djvu/74

48 48 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. In the last alternative, the Procureur General draws up Simtse en accusatio7i, or indictment. This is communicated to the accused, now removed to the lock-up adjoining the court. It is the Presi- dent's turn to "hear" the accused in private, and make a last effort before trial to extract a confession. These preliminaries having been completed, the trial in due course comes on, with all the strangely undignified accompani- ments which caused so much surprise to Englishmen at home and in America in the Nayve case. However, it is now seen that, objectionable as the procedure in court may be, unfair as it may appear to the prisoner, and con- trary as it is to our notions of justice, a person accused of a crime does not reach the Cour d' Assises without ample precautions being taken to establish his guilt. In most cases the judges perform their duties behind the scene, with a great deal more respect for individual freedom and fair play than would appear from the mode of operation in court. In fact, it is rare that an innocent man reaches the Cour d Assises. The reader will also understand now why an acquittal by the jury seems a slur on the competency of the professional judge. Such a criminal procedure as I have described, in spite of all its precautions to secure a thorough, if not always fair trial, will of course lend itself to abuse where the judges are influenced by exceptional considerations. Some wag of a bitter temperament once said that, if he was accused of stealing even one of the towers of Notre Dame, he would make haste to put the Belgian frontier between himself and 2i juge d instruction. Despite the exaggeration of this sarcasm, there are many in France who have had in times gone by to feel its implication was not far from the truth. The fact that there is a movement in France in favor of making the proceedings before Xh^ juge d instruction public shows where the weakest place in the system is. Such publicity would be a guaranty for the examining judge as well as for the prisoner, and might help to remove a certain distrust of repressive justice which it cannot be denied still prevails in France. All the reform the Legislature, however, is likely for the present to make, is to allow the accused to be assisted by his counsel at the examinations behind the scene. Thomas Barclay y LL.B. Paris, February i, 1896.