Eric Dupond-Moretti in Marseille, March 12. – Alain ROBERT / SIPA
It was a wish expressed a few days ago by the Head of State. The Minister of Justice Eric Dupond-Moretti announced this Sunday the presentation “at the end of May” in the Council of Ministers of a bill aimed at “filling” a “legal vacuum”, after the Court of Cassation confirmed the irresponsibility criminal case of the murderer of Sarah Halimi, a Jewish sexagenarian killed in 2017 in Paris.
While confirming the anti-Semitic nature of the crime, the highest judicial court had confirmed on April 14 the abolition of the judgment of the murderer, taken from a “delirious puff” during the facts. This decision aroused great emotion and a very strong incomprehension within a part of the French Jewish community, and pushed Emmanuel Macron to demand “a change of the law”.
In accordance with the request of the President of the Republic, the government will present at the end of May in the Council of Ministers a bill to fill the legal vacuum which appeared in the Sarah Halimi affair.
This tragic story that has marked us all will advance our law. pic.twitter.com/SqF2O28utj– Eric Dupond-Moretti (@E_DupondM) April 25, 2021
Report on criminal irresponsibility commissioned last year
The Minister of Justice was given a report in February on criminal irresponsibility, commissioned a year earlier by his predecessor Nicole Belloubet, in order to find out whether the current law needed to be changed.
According to a press release from the Chancellery, the conclusions of rapporteurs Philippe Houillon and Dominique Raimbourg “held that it was not necessary to modify article 122-1 of the Penal Code on irresponsibility for psychic or neuropsychic disorder”. This article provides that “is not criminally responsible the person who was suffering, at the time of the facts, of a psychic or neuropsychic disorder having abolished his discernment or the control of his acts”.
However, the law does not make any distinction as to the origin of the mental disorder which caused the author to lose consciousness of his actions. “However, the judge cannot distinguish where the legislator has chosen not to distinguish”, underlined the Court of Cassation in its judgment in the Sarah Halimi case, returning the ball to the legislator.
A new law which will bear the name of “Sarah Halimi”
Affirming that “France would never judge the fools”, Eric Dupond-Moretti considered that it was necessary “to draw the consequences of the decision of the Court of Cassation” and “to respond to the outstretched hand”, according to the press release from the ministry. The new law could be adopted “by Parliament in the summer,” it said.
“With others, I solemnly request that this new law bear the name of Sarah Halimi, so that it is inscribed in the collective memory of our country”, declared in an interview with Sunday newspaper Francis Kalifat, President of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (Crif).
Several rallies are scheduled for Sunday afternoon in Paris and other cities in France to demand “justice for Sarah Halimi”.