The human tragedy

Stéphane Durand-Soufflet, crime reporter for Le Figaro, returns of 14 trials which he reports the key moments. No stranger to courtrooms, he knows the atmosphere, the main actors - their habits, "strings" - he does not hesitate to judge, in turn, citing the name. The selected cases are varied, and none resembles another. Would the tragic dimension of each, you'd read short plays. Overall, I found this entertaining book, both easy to read and well written, although not always devoid of bias. Sometimes the author's pronouncements enlighten us, but at other times, as in the case Viguier, they try to guide the judgment of the reader with a little too insistently. Some excerpts chosen:

Besse trial; dialogue between the president and an accused who has long pondered his career:
_ I do not want it to those who sent me there. I do not claim anything. I can not be a model because I was wrong.
_ Some you took for a model.
_ I regret.
_ Do you want to live free?
_ I already am.

Fourniret trial; a psychiatrist, for his clumsiness, managed to laugh in court. Everyone laughed. Criminal together the families of girls tormented by it. Columnist back on this moment of apparent indecency: "On reflection, the public more plays its game when it horrifies his coldness, his cruelty, his sense of detail, that when he laughed along with him : when Fourniret laughs, he does not enjoy the terror it inspires, there is only one laughing in a crowd of his fellow men. "

Catineau trial; the evidence of a psychiatrist chilled me: "It is exceptional that a man kills his wife twice, I may have seen five cases of this kind in thirty years of expertise." For information, Jean-Louis Catineau was jailed 7 years for the murder of his first wife. He was sentenced to 20 years - theoretical - for the murder of the second.