Barely François Molins left in retirement that here is his successor. High magistrate with an impressive CV, Rémy Heitz, 59, will occupy one of the key positions in French justice, that of public prosecutor at the Court of Cassation, by decree published on Sunday in the Official Journal. Blanched under the harness of the judiciary, Rémy Heitz, former public prosecutor of Paris and ex-director of criminal affairs and pardons at the Ministry of Justice, was attorney general at the Paris Court of Appeal since September 2021.
He will have to manage, in his new eminently political position, the possible dismissal of the Keeper of the Seals, Eric Dupond-Moretti, before the Court of Justice of the Republic (CJR) for illegal taking of interest. In this case, he would be responsible for representing the prosecution at the CJR, the only body authorized to judge members of the government for crimes or misdemeanors committed in the exercise of their function. For the time being, the Keeper of the Seals has lodged an appeal against the dismissal order before the CJR.
He is “clearly above the fray”
If his predecessor cultivated a fierce independence from the executive, to the point of sometimes opposing the Keeper of the Seals head-on, Rémy Heitz’s attitude to power will be scrutinized. “His intellectual skills are remarkable,” said a magistrate who worked with him. He is “clearly above the fray”, adds this colleague on condition of anonymity. His only fault, he continues lip service, is “having no hobby”, entirely devoted to his work.
His appointment in November 2018 as public prosecutor of Paris, already to succeed François Molins, had created a controversy in the political and judicial world. By dismissing candidates selected by the Minister of Justice at the time, the Elysée had been accused of having favored his appointment. “These criticisms were unjustified”, defended Rémy Heitz in September 2021 on the specialized site Dalloz.
He handled the Godard case
His management of the “yellow vests” crisis and in particular his note to Parisian prosecutors recommending that police custody only be lifted after the demonstrations, even in the event of classification without follow-up, had also been criticized by unions of magistrates and lawyers. “Faced with these large-scale movements, repeated over time in the short term, we had to put out of harm’s way people who had committed serious acts and whom we had to avoid finding the following Saturday”, s” Rémy Heitz was justified in September 2021 after his appointment as Attorney General at the Paris Court of Appeal.
A native of Nancy, where he was born on October 26, 1963, Rémy Heitz had just been appointed public prosecutor of Saint-Malo (1999-2001) when he had to manage the highly publicized Godard affair, named of the doctor suspected of having killed his wife and their two children with whom he had disappeared at sea aboard his sailboat.
It is labeled on the right
Promoted to Deputy Public Prosecutor at the Paris Tribunal de Grande Instance, he joined the office of Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin in 2002 as technical adviser in charge of justice. Labeled on the right, he had already been in 1994 chief of staff of Pascal Clément (who was Minister of Justice) when the latter was minister in charge of relations with Parliament in the government of Edouard Balladur.
The public remembers him as President Jacques Chirac’s “Mister Road Safety” from 2003 to 2006. Criticized by motorist associations for having installed speed cameras on the roads, he will have the satisfaction of seeing the number of fatalities on the road drop sharply during his tenure.
Appointed public prosecutor of Metz in 2008, the magistrate presided over the court of Bobigny, the second largest court in France, between 2011 and 2015, before becoming first president of the Court of Appeal of Colmar then director of criminal affairs. and pardons in August 2017. He left this important position at the Chancellery, in charge of the implementation of the government’s criminal policy, by becoming public prosecutor of Paris.