GRANDSTAND. “Jubillar case: justice is not fortune telling or a game of chance”

Avi Bitton, lawyer and former member of the council of the order, and Lois Pamela Lesot, lawyer, look into the case of the disappearance of Delphine Jubillar. Here is their forum: “It is always difficult for lawyers to give an opinion on a file to which they do not have access. However, the prosecutor himself has made the essentials public, and it is therefore legitimate to ask us about this case. , in our capacity as criminal lawyers accustomed to criminal cases. What is it? The perfect crime, committed not by a professional criminal, worthy of a detective novel, but by an ordinary man: no corpus delicti , no crime scene, no weapon, no blood or DNA, and no confession.

However, the investigators have implemented extensive investigations: genetic, computer and telephone expertise, underwater and aerial explorations, custody of relatives, searches… There is therefore no material evidence, but a bundle of clues, including some clumsy or contradictory statements by Cédric Jubillar, which are open to interpretation.

In fact, the indictment of Cédric Jubillar was not obvious, since it intervened more than six months after the facts and when he had been heard as a witness from the start of the case. However, he remains in detention for six months, in solitary confinement, continuing to claim his innocence.

Let us remember the Jacques Viguier affair, named after this law professor who had been accused of having murdered his wife, whose body could not be found. He too was about to divorce, she too had a lover, and they too had had children. Like Cédric Jubillar, Jacques Viguier had been placed in pre-trial detention, then he had been released but sent back to the Assize Court, which acquitted him at first instance and again on appeal. To date, the body of Suzanne Viguier has not been found, and it is not known whether she is dead or alive.

“

Justice is not fortune telling or a game of chance

“

Cédric Jubillar was refused all his requests for release, on the grounds that there were still investigations to be carried out. Today, the said investigations have all been made. All but one: the discovery of the corpse, whose very existence remains to be demonstrated.
We are not claiming that Cédric Jubillar is innocent, and the future may prove his guilt. It is possible that the investigators finally discover the body. Even if they found it, it could not justify, a posteriori, the incarceration of an individual from the outset in the absence of evidence at the time of this incarceration. Justice is not divination or a game of chance.

Ultimately, in our capacity as jurists attached to freedoms, we wonder about his continued detention on remand, which should not be able to be based on simple suspicions, and even less on a doubt, this doubt must always benefit the accused . Because, as Voltaire wrote, “it is better to risk saving a guilty than to condemn an ​​innocent”.