Six-month delay before verdict in Sarkozy trial: reasons explained
The Paris Court of Appeal has set 30 November for the delivery of its decision in the alleged Libyan financing case of the 2007 campaign.
Six-month delay before verdict in Sarkozy trial: reasons explained
The former president of the Republic will have to wait until 30 November to learn the verdict of his second appeal trial. This case concerns allegations of illegal financing by Libya of his 2007 election campaign. The president of the Paris Court of Appeal, Olivier Géron, announced this date at the conclusion of proceedings, leaving Nicolas Sarkozy in uncertainty for nearly half a year.
This type of delay is not isolated. Marine Le Pen faces a similar wait in the European parliamentary assistants case. Her court of appeal will not deliver its decision until 7 July, nearly five months after the end of her hearing on 11 February.
Tania Jewczuk, a magistrate and spokesperson for the Parisian court, justifies these durations by the complexity of the cases. She cites as an example the Rio-Paris flight crash in 2009, for which the appeal decision was handed down nearly six months after final submissions, after seventeen years of judicial proceedings.
The causes of these delays are multiple. Cases can run to several volumes of investigation, involve numerous defendants prosecuted for various charges, and incorporate new documents during proceedings. Judges must first address procedural questions, then analyse the substance of each offence.
In the case of the former head of state, magistrates will have to examine 73 volumes of investigation, four volumes of written submissions, 1,356 pages of conclusions, as well as the records of 54 days of hearing. For each defendant and each charge, they will have to demonstrate both the material reality of the facts and the intention to commit them.
If a conviction is pronounced, the sentence must be reasoned and adapted to each defendant. This collective task, which falls to three magistrates, demands precision and rigour. On appeal, the final document — the order — can run to several hundred pages. The first judgment in this case extended to 380 pages. The drafting and reviewing of this text absorb considerable time.
Source: franceinfo
Source: France Info