French Court's ruling in cases of Marc Machin and Loïc Sécher

Marc Machin and Loïc Sécher have more in common than just being French.

They've both spent time in prison (seven and nine years respectively) for crimes they, and others, maintained they had never committed: Sécher for the rape of a 13-year-old girl in 2000 and Machin for the murder of a woman in 2001.

And this week, for only the sixth time since 1945 the French Court of revision annulled the original sentences.

It's only a partial victory for both men though as the Court also decided that they must face a retrial.

For Sécher it'll be his third, and although he was freed on Tuesday and is "presumed innocent" until his case is heard again, he remains on probation.

Machin, who was released in October 2008, is currently back behind bars awaiting trial on a different charge of sexual aggression.

There are parallels in the two cases, both of which perhaps highlight how reluctant the French justice system is to admit that mistakes could have been made.

Indeed the Court could have decided to acquit both men, but instead "took the path of prudence" in ordering a retrial in both cases.

Sécher was sentenced to 16 years back in 2003 for the rape of a 13-year-old girl in 2000 in the village of La Chapelle-Saint-Sauveur in Loire-Atlantique in western France.

His accuser, who has since been recognised as being "psychologically disturbed", came forward in April 2008 and in a letter to France's chief prosecutor, retracted her original statement.

"Sécher had not raped her," she wrote. "And her conscience no longer allowed her to live with the knowledge that an innocent man was sitting in prison."

In October 2008 a commission of judges (la commission de révision des condamnations pénales) decided that "a miscarriage of justice had not yet been proven", and that more evidence was required before Sécher could be released.

Machin was arrested in December 2001 for the murder of Marie-Agnès Bedot. Apparently all the evidence pointed towards him and while being questioned he admitted guilt - but later retracted his confession and claimed his innocence.

After being charged, he was put on trial and three years later found guilty and sentenced to 18 years.

In March 2008 however another man, 34-year-old David Sagno, admitted that he had murdered Bedot after turning himself in to the police and saying he needed "to ease his conscience".

Further investigation revealed that not only was Sagno's DNA found on the clothes of Bedot, but also on the clothing of another woman, Maria-Judith Araujo, who was murdered in May 2002 - in exactly the same spot.

Tuesday's historic decision - it was the first time the Court has ruled on two cases of "presumed innocence" on the same day - is perhaps proof, if it were needed, as to how slowly those proverbial wheels of French justice turn particularly in cases where the weight of evidence would appear to suggest that the original conviction was an incorrect one.

And it left the family, supporters and lawyers of both men disappointed and exasperated.

"We expected an outright quashing of the original sentence," Sécher's lawyer, Eric Dupond-Moretti, said after the hearing.

"But I'm completely confident of the outcome of a future trial," he added.

"For me it's obvious that he should be cleared," said Machin's father (also called Marc) of his son.

"And it's inconceivable that another trial will find him guilty," he added.

"Holding another trial is a waste of taxpayers' and public money."

The overturning of a sentence through a retrial has only taken place six times in France since 1945.

The most recent case was that of Patrick Dils, who in 1989 was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of two children.

A retrial was ordered and in 2002 he was found not guilty.

The case of a French man called for jury selection for his own trial

The French judicial system is a notoriously cumbersome creature and of course, as in many other countries, has been is prone to making mistakes, or at least taking a heck of a long time in admitting to, and then correcting them.

Take the case of Loïc Sécher, sentenced to 16 years for a crime he never committed, according to post-trial testimony by the victim.

Or Marc Machin, who spent six years in prison for a murder perpetrated by someone else.

Or Antonio Madeira, a man wrongly found guilty of raping his daughter, Virginie, and after serving six years was released - conditionally. He's still "guilty" in the eyes of the law even though in 2006 Virginie not only retracted her accusations, but published a book "J'ai menti" ("I lied") in which she admitted that she had made the whole story up.

And then of course there was the infamous Outreau child abuse trial, arguably one of France's biggest miscarriages of justice.

There's general agreement among political parties that the French justice system need overhauling, but reform is hard and appears to be in its own right a long and painful process.

Whatever eventually gets through parliament, let's hope it ensures that cases such as those mentioned (and many others of course) won't happen again, and that it can also avoid the administrative mix-up that occurred before the recent trial of a 66-year-old man in the town of Parthenay in western France.

He was accused of sexually molesting a boy between 1994 and 1996 - a charge to which he admitted after the victim revealed what had happened in 2006.

Yes those proverbial "wheels of justice" grind just as slowly here in France as anywhere else.

The trial was set to begin on December 10, but first a jury had to be chosen.

And among those called for selection on November 30...yes you see where this is going don't you, especially as the title has rather given it away...was the accused.

Not surprisingly, he ignored the summons and was fined €150 for not appearing for selection; a sum that was eventually lifted after the court realised the error it had made.

It might not be a tale on the scale of the miscarriages of justice that have continued to plague the system over the years, but perhaps it's an indication that something is not quite right even at the very core of the process itself.

Just a thought.

French justice maintains an "innocent" man is still "guilty"

Sometimes it must be hard for those outside of France to understand the workings of this country's judicial system.

But there again for those living here, it's surely not always particularly easy.

Last year two separate cases - those of Loïc Sécher and Marc Machin - showed how innocent men had spent time behind bars for crimes that had either never taken place (Sécher) or for which they had been wrongly sentenced (Machin).

And on Monday, once again the French system showed how reluctant it is to admit possible miscarriages of justice.

The latest case concerns Antonio Madeira - now 55 - and his daughter, Virginie.

In 2001 Madeira was sentenced to 12 years in prison after being found guilty of raping his 14-year-old daughter. She testified that he had sexually abused her from the age of six.

But in 2006 Virginie, then aged 21, not only retracted her accusations, but published a book "J'ai menti" ("I lied") in which she admitted that she had made the whole story up.

"I decided to write this book to show that my father is innocent and this is the only solution I've found," she said in interviews at the time.

To attract the attention of her classmates, Virginie said she had "pretended to have been the victim of sexual abuse," and it was a story she had repeated to police and the courts before her father was found guilty and sentenced.

After serving six years behind bars Madeira was released - conditionally - and his lawyers sought to have the case retried based on new evidence.

But that first request and the most recent one, to the commission of revision of the penal judgments were both turned down.

This time around it was because as far as the commission was concerned, the retractions of the daughter and her battle over several years to prove the innocence of her father, including the publication of a book were "not credible when compared to the accusations".

It also insisted that Madeira had at one point admitted the crimes of which he had been accused and that the testimony from experts that showed gynaecological tests proved Virginie was a virgin were "inconclusive".

The overturning of a sentence through a retrial has only taken place six times in France since 1945. The most recent case was that of Patrick Dils, who in 1989 was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of two children.

A retrial was ordered and in 2002 he was found not guilty.

For Madeira's lawyer, Michaël Doulikian, his client's case is a clear example of how slowly the French judicial system works, and how unwilling it is to admit an error has been made.

"Instead of recognising that there had been a miscarriage of justice and ordering a retrial, the commission has compounded the initial mistake," he said.

"Madeira will be found not guilty because his innocence and the virginity of his daughter have both been established," he added, promising that there would be a third request for a retrial submitted soon.

A French miscarriage of justice - as yet "unproven"

For the time being Loïc Sécher will remain behind bars.

That was the decision of a commission of judges (la commission de révision des condamnations pénales) on Monday, which decided that more evidence was required before he could be released.

It said that "additional information was needed" and at the moment it didn't have all the elements that would justify suspending Sécher's sentence or setting him free.

In other words he's not as he, his lawyers and even the legal team of his "victim" had hoped, being released and his original conviction hasn't yet been overturned.

Instead the wheels of French justice are moving just as slowly as ever in reaching a decision that many - barring the system itself - seem to think is the right and just one.

Secher has been in prison since December 2003, serving a 16-year sentence for a crime he claimed he never committed and one which the alleged victim said earlier this year never occurred in the first place.

To recap the previous story that appeared here, Sécher was found guilty of raping a 13-year-old girl in the 2000 in the village of La Chapelle-Saint-Sauveur in Loire-Atlantique in western France.

His accuser - now 22 years old - came forward in April this year, and in a letter to France's chief prosecutor, retracted her original claims that he had raped her. Sécher, she wrote, had not raped her, and her conscience no longer allowed her to live with the knowledge that an innocent man was sitting in prison.

French law allows Sécher's legal team to resubmit a request for the sentence to be overturned, which is exactly what one of his lawyers, Yann Choucq, intends to do.

"Asking for his (Sécher's) release on the current evidence doesn't appear to be unreasonable in my opinion," he said. "I still hope that he'll be freed soon and his honour restored."

That's also a hope echoed by Cécile de Oliveira, the lawyer for the 22-year-old woman. De Oliveira said that the commission's latest decision was also a blow for her client, and told reporters that as far as she was concerned, the retraction should have been enough to ensure Sécher's release."

"My client has clearly expressed her wish that Sécher be released from prison, and I think that's entirely compatible with further investigations," she said.

"She will also suffer from this latest decision and was shocked and had been expecting a decision that would lead to his release."

Sécher's committee of support, which numbers 150 people, was also disappointed by Monday's decision, and is still hoping that this latest decision will be reviewed, especially in the light of last week's release of Marc Machin, falsely imprisoned in 2004 for a murder he didn't commit.

"Justice takes its time and is very careful (in overturning a judgement)," said Jean-Pierre Chesné, one of the committee members.

"We wish that it had shown the same caution before accusing and sentencing Sécher in the first place."

A miscarriage of justice?

Sometimes a country's legal system doesn't get it right. And that might well be the situation if a case currently making the headlines here in France is to be believed.

Has an innocent man been sitting in a French prison for the past six years for a crime that never happened?

A story covered in Monday evening's prime time news on TF1 and in several of the national daily newspapers, highlighted the case of 47-year-old Loïc Sécher, who has been behind bars perhaps for exactly that reason.

Wind back to 2000, when in November of that year police in the village of La Chapelle-Saint-Sauveur in Loire-Atlantique in western France, arrested Sécher, a farm labourer, and took him in for questioning following allegations made by a 13-year-old girl that he had sexually molested and raped her on three separate occasions.

She was the daughter of friends.

He proclaimed his innocence, but was later charged, and in December 2003 a court found him guilty and sentenced him to 16 years in prison.

An appeal a year later upheld that ruling and although Sécher has always maintained his innocence his cause seemed a lost one until April this year.

That was when the girl, now 22 years old, sent France's Chief Prosecutor a letter in which she said Sécher was "innocent and she could no longer live with the knowledge that he was in prison."

Sécher's defence team put in a request to France's court of cassation (the main court of "last resort" in France) that the case be re-examined, their client released and the original ruling overturned.

Yvon Chotard, one Sécher's lawyers, said that it had taken a lot of courage for the woman to retract her original claims and that at the time the allegations were made there had been no real investigation into the background of a girl who even her own lawyers admitted was "psychologically fragile."

"Eight years ago she had been the victim of school bullying by a trio of boys older than her," he is quoted as saying in Le Figaro.

In addition, at the time of his trial there had reportedly been no DNA evidence to prove that Sécher had assaulted the girl, and indeed a medical examination was unable to prove that a rape had taken place.

On Monday the court of cassation met behind closed doors to consider Sécher's case, but it did not reach the decision Chotard or his client had been hoping for. Instead it delayed making a final ruling until mid October.

"He (Sécher) is a victim of a miscarriage of justice," said Chotard after the hearing. "Our hope now is that the French justice system will release someone who has been claimed innocent by the victim."

For the moment though Sécher remains behind bars.

Even if the court decides to release him next month the process of overturning and in effect annulling the original decision could take a lot longer and would require another appeal.