Angry lawyers and bewildered defendants: the fallout from fast-tracking French rioting cases
French courts are using a fast-track legal procedure to process over 900 individuals arrested during recent riots. Defense lawyers argue that the speed of the process prevents adequate legal representation and ignores the underlying social issues.
Why it matters
The situation highlights tensions between judicial efficiency and the right to a fair trial during periods of civil unrest.
A man throws a plastic traffic cone through a burning barricade in Paris during riots last week. A man throws a plastic traffic cone through a burning barricade in Paris during riots last week. France Angry lawyers and bewildered defendants: the fallout from fast-tracking French rioting cases Politicians have called for ruthless sentencing, but lawyers blame the politicians for the poverty, and anger, behind their clients’ looting
Prefer the Guardian on Google Awa, 18, stood in the dock in the tribunal de Paris , a small, mute and bewildered figure seeming unable to understand, let alone answer, the simplest of questions.
The court was told she had joined young people who looted an Yves Saint Laurent store on Boulevard Saint Germain in Paris’s Left Bank late on Sunday and stripped it bare within minutes.
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