The request formed by the defense of the complainant and a feminist collective, following the acquittal judgment pronounced by the Assize Court of Appeal of Val-de-Marne in favor of the two police officers accused of rapes in a meeting, has been rejected.
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The Attorney General at the Court of Cassation took the time of reflection before responding in the negative on Wednesday, June 8, at the request of “appeal in the interest of the law” formed by the lawyers of Emily Spanton and by a feminist collective on April 24, following the acquittal of the two police officers accused of rape in meeting at 36, Quai des Orfèvres. This appeal decision had informed a first verdict of conviction of the two officials to seven years in prison, pronounced by the Paris Court of Assizes on January 31, 2019.
During the night of April 22 to 23, 2014, Emily Spanton, a Canadian tourist, had met several police officers from the Research and Intervention Brigade (BRI) in an Irish pub close to 36, Quai des Orfèvres, the district general of the Parisian judicial police. After several glasses and exchanges of kisses with civil servants, the young woman had been offered a visit to the premises of the brigade. It was released until only an hour later, in shock, to immediately denounce the officials monitoring the building of unwanted sexual relations.
an unusual procedure
In the motivation of its judgment, the Assize Court of Appeal had noted the “many inaccuracies, inaccuracies, even several lies” of Emily Spanton, as well as data drawn from telephony and video surveillance, which The timing “does not allow to declare coherent the existence of multiple successive sexual scenes (…) in a very limited time”. She was also backed by the conclusions of a psychiatric expertise of the complainant that “the personality of Emily Spanton, her state of alcoholism at the time of the facts, her speech on the alleged facts guide, without being able to invalidate Formally his testimony, to make a strong reserve as to the possibility of relying on his only testimony “. The court and the jurors had thus considered that “the doubts persistent in the relationship of the facts and the apprehension of the various objective elements of the file” should benefit the accused.
Defense, supported by a feminist collective, had then tried to obtain an “appeal in the interest of the law”, an unusual procedure entrusted by the legislator to the Attorney General at the Court of Cassation or the Keeper of the Seals . Unlike ordinary appeals, which can lead to the cassation of the decision rendered, the appeal in the interest of the law cannot call into question the acquittal decision, which is final. He has only doctrinal interest, in the sense that his goal is to examine whether the motivation for the acquittal judgment is “in law and in law only in accordance with legal requirements”, as the Attorney General recalls, François Molins, in his written response to the applicants.
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