Videoconferencing in the French Criminal Trial, from One Ritual to Another ?
La visioconférence dans le procès pénal français, d’un rituel a l’autre ?
Résumé
This paper proposes to return to the genesis and the considerable expansion that videoconferencing has undergone in French law in recent years by questioning how it affects the traditional judicial ritual. Because it produces a spatial explosion and erasure of bodies, videoconferencing mishandles this ritual. The penal process is invaded by the emotions that the judicial ritual, distorted, no longer allows to channel. The authors then wonder about the possibility of seeing in the rules surrounding the use of videoconferencing the drafting of new rituals. However, the lack of a precise definition of the modalities of videoconference (such as the opening of the hearing, the framing, the assistance of the lawyer, etc.) at the central level shifts the task of constructing the new ritual on the local actors, thus leading to its fragmentation, which is incompatible with the equality of all before justice.