I could have posted this in FQ, but I decided on Cafe Society because it’s about a movie, and the discussion could stray from the factual.
I just finished watching the movie Anatomy of a Fall. It’s a French film about woman whose husband dies in what could have been either an accident or homicide. She is charged with murder, and much of the movie takes place in a courtroom.
I liked the overall story, but most of the courtroom scenes bothered me because it seemed like there were no rules about what anyone could say. Witnesses testified about the state of mind of the defendant and the deceased as if they were stating fact. Lawyers (particularly the prosecutor) made sarcastic remarks, argued during questioning, and made statements of their own as if they were testifying. The lawyers interrupted each other. While questioning a witness, they turned to the defendant and asked questions of her. In one case, a witness lectured the court on the nature of knowledge.
I know very little about French law. I know it’s different from American or British law. But surely French courts have rules against a lot of the things shown in this movie. Can someone who knows French law say something about this?
Also, if anyone else has seen Anatomy of a Fall, what did you think of it?
I would suggest pinging one of our fluent French speakers (such as @Moonrise ) to see whether there is a French equivalent to Legal Eagle or some other authority who posts commentary on the technical accuracy of stuff like this in France, akin to “le exchange du stack.”
(And for what it’s worth, I felt similar disorientation while watching Korean courtroom procedures in Extraordinary Attorney Woo. I had no idea what was accurate but procedurally different, versus fudged for TV.)
I’m afraid I cannot help you much since I’m not a lawyer and I haven’t seen the movie (plus, I’m not French).
However, what you describe seems to me like artistic licence. The purpose probably isn’t to give a realistic description of the trial but rather a meditation on truth.
I should have been clearer. I was hoping your fluency would help in googling up a relevant resource, since you might better know what to search for and how to filter through the results.
Courtroom dramas typically diverge from normal procedure and accepted practice of examination and testimony in ways that make a jurist shudder with how wrong they are. In 12 Angry Men, widely regarded as one of the legal dramas (even though the entire movie and play occur within the jury room), Henry Fonda’s character goes out during a break and does his own research which directly leads to an acquittal, which if discovered would have immediately led to a mistrial for how inappropriate and prejudicial that is. Don’t even get me started on how messed up A Few Good Men is, regardless of how great the Sorkin dialogue rolls off the tongues of the uniformly great cast, or what a steaming pile of nonsense Inherit The Wind is.
My Cousin Vinny, on the other hand, is dead-on-balls accurate; not just about courtroom procedure and what happens if you talk back to the judge, but what it is like to get “home-towned”, to perform an investigation, and how to undermine the credibility of seemingly unimpeachable eyewitnesses. It is particularly good on demonstrating the voir dire of an expert witness, and how to explain complex technical issues to a lay audience.
As for the film mentioned by the o.p. and French legal procedure I know nothing but I suspect it is indeed artistic licence and/or a screenwriter whose only knowledge of a courtroom is from other films, which is frequently the case; ditto for medical procedure, military operations, engineering, et cetera.
That was exactly what I thought of after reading the original post. I doubt that it’s the usual procedure in Korean courts to have a lawyer jump up and make random baseless conjectures whenever they like during a trial.
I have found this interview (in French) of the lawyer who served as legal consultant for the movie.
It does say :
C’est d’abord un grand film sur le couple, vu comme territoire de lutte où chacun cherche sa place. C’est aussi un film de procès très abouti, qui interroge de manière poignante le fonctionnement de la justice criminelle française
“It is first and foremost a great movie on the couple, seen as a battlefield where each one is looking for their place. It is also a very accomplished trial movie, which questions touchingly the functioning of the French criminal justice system.”
Thank you, that’s a great example of what I was hoping you might be able to find.
I recommend the OP take the link to Google translate. It’s pretty balanced commentary, acknowledging that the movie might not be strictly accurate:
While also saying that, despite technical inaccuracies, it still feels real, even to professionals:
There’s also an exchange in which the French attorney says their trials can be “messy” compared to the more regimented and closely-managed American equivalents.
I’ve not seen the film, and I’m sure significant artistic licence has been taken, as with almost all legal dramas.
That said, in response to this:
My very limited understanding of criminal procedure in civil law systems is that there aren’t complex rules of evidence as there are in the common law systems.
My long-ago comparative law prof explained that the difference came from the English jury system.
Because the common law jury was the decider, and the jury’s reasons were unknown and unreviewable, it was necessary to have firm rules about what information the jury could consider. That was the origin of the rules of evidence.
Since the civil law system didn’t evolve with the jury as the ultimate decision-maker, but with judges, there was not the same need for strict rules of evidence. Judges had to explain their reasons for their decisions, on both facts and law, and those décisions on facts could be reviewed by higher courts, in a way that is completely foreign to a jury system.
That meant that criminal law in civil law systems did not develop a complex system of evidentiary rules. Witnesses have greater leeway in their testimony, because the professionalism of the judges can take that into account and explain how they have used the testimony in reaching their decisions.
@Schnitte would be in a better position to comment.
Using the name of the film’s legal advisor found in the link Moonrise posted, I found another interview with the same lawyer, which has a very interesting excerpt.
That seems to be directly on-point with what the OP is asking about.
I studied German law (and some English law), but never the French system. Nonetheless, I have some basic knowledge of French law, and both the German and French systems are part of the Roman-based civil law tradition, so I might be able to help a little.
Anglo-American criminal trials are based on the adversarial principle, which means prosecution and defence are pitted against each other, and each side presents its own evidence and witnesses to convince the jury. The jury then passes a verdict, and if the verdict is guilty, the judge passes sentence. The judge’s role is limited to sentencing, and to presiding over the trial; other than that, it’s the trial is very much run by the advocates for the prosecution and the defence. As a consequence, admissibility of evidence is of crucial importance - whether a piece of evidence introduced by a party is admitted or not can make a massive difference, and there are detailed rules about admitting or excluding evidence.
The civil law inquisitorial tradition places the judge in the driver’s seat. It’s the (impartial) judge who is in change of fact-finding; the judge questions the witnesses, the judge calls evidence. This means evidence is introduced and assessed by an impartial side. In addition, the judge is legally trained and experienced and less easily than a lay jury drawn away by evidence which, on the face of it, looks impressive but is, in fact, weak. As a consequence, the rules on admissibility of evidence are less stringent than in the common law tradition.
I’m sure the film exaggerates the chaos that can ensue in an inquisitorial trial, but I suppose these differences explain part of the story. In my studies I have certainly found English law to be much more stringent with its rules about admitting evidence, so I wouldn’t be surprised if in actual trial, a civil law fact-finding hearing would also be laxer.
It’s true that this would have led to a mistrial if the judge had found out about it, but it’s something that could happen. Jury deliberations happen in secret, so unless one of the other jurors reported it, the judge would have no way of knowing about it. I think the most likely juror to have done so would have been the one played by E.G. Marshall, but in the movie this didn’t happen.
That was the case in the German trials (also an inquisitorial system) that I attended as a lay judge (Schöffe). The witnesses testified about what happened mainly as a chronological narrative, and one witness briefly speculated about what he thought went on in the mind of the accused who robbed him. No need to shut him up, just for the bench to quietly and sensibly think that this is not useful evidence and should be disregarded.
