The news that a 79-year-old French inmate, convicted of serial murders, is finally standing trial after decades of procedural limbo invites a grisly comparison with the British judicial system. France, with its theatrical delays and labyrinthine appeals, drags the process to the point of parody. One imagines the accused, a wraith of a man, hunched in a courtroom that smells of mothballs and stale justice.
The British system, by contrast, prides itself on efficiency and finality. Yet does this haste serve the cause of truth? We risk replacing the guillotine of delay with the garrote of speed, leaving little room for the nuances that a civilised society must afford even its worst offenders.
The French approach, infuriating as it is, at least acknowledges that age does not erase the gravity of the crime. We in Britain would do well to ponder whether our own obsession with judicial economy has made us forget that justice is not merely swift but also profound.
