ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on the ambiguous place taken by doubt in the current practices of the Assize Courts. However their complex and lengthy procedures offer an exemplary display on one side of the ideas and ideals governing the French notion of Justice, and on the other side of the way actors and proceedings are supposed to implement these ideals. The presence of a jury is central to the French Assize Court proceedings. The jurors are six, selected at random at the beginning of each new lawsuit, from a panel of thirty people selected for each session, the prosecutor and the defence lawyer having the right to challenge the selection. The lawyer's duty is to build a credible narrative to oppose the one offered by the prosecution. The strategy of the defence can be to raise doubt in the mind of the jurors on the legitimacy of punishment, on fairness of harsh sentence, in cases of people already mistreated by life.