Overview
- Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin, who proposed Tuesday to exclude rapes and all crimes tried by the cour d’assises from his plea‑bargain plan, limited it to fatal assaults and simple robberies handled by the cour criminelle.
- The Justice Ministry says the narrower scope would touch only a few dozen cases a year, mostly in Île‑de‑France and the southeast.
- Under the procedure, an accused person must fully admit the facts and then accepts a prosecutor’s proposed sentence that is about one‑third lower with a hearing cut to roughly half a day and activated only with the prosecutor’s and the victim’s consent.
- Criminal lawyers and groups fighting sexual violence had led strong pushback, and figures such as Paris bar leader Louis Degos and CNB president Julie Couturier welcomed the retreat.
- Parliament has already passed the bill in the Senate and the National Assembly takes it up on June 29, while roughly 6,000 criminal cases wait for trial with average delays of six years for rape and eight for homicide and critics call for more judges and resources.