Dominici business

See also: the Business Dominici (homonymy)

The business Dominici , starting in the night of the 4 to the August 5th 1952, is a criminal case which has occurred in France. It was followed by several Journaliste S, as well French as foreign.

History

In the night from August 4th to 5th 1952, six shots are drawn at one hour ten. Four hours later, bodies of three English, its wife Anne and their Elizabeth daughter, which with the crashed to pieces head, are found by Gustave Dominici close to their car in edge of main road 96, with a few meters of the family farm (Large Earth) and with a few kilometers of the village of Lurs in the Low-Alps (today Alp-of-High-Provence).

The sons of Gaston Dominici show their father and blame their nephew. Gaston " acknowledge that he had seen Mrs. Drummond stripping herself and had proposed to him to have a sexual relation. It was of agreement and in even redemandé. The noise alerted the husband. A brawl followed and Gaston made conceal the husband ulcéré". These consents are made nine times, but are retracted five times.

The lawsuit of Gaston Dominici began the November 17th 1954. Moving crowd, it has an international width and mobilizes several French writers. Gaston Dominici, rough and not very loquacious, presents a clumsy defense. At the end of twelve days of audience, and in spite of the absence of evidence, Gaston Dominici, 77 years, is declared guilty without extenuating circumstance, which condemns it to death.

In front of the improbabilities recorded during the lawsuit, a new investigation was ordered fifteen days after the verdict. To 1957, the president Coty commuted the sorrow and, in 1960, the general de Gaulle released Gaston Dominici who, on the end of his life, became the friend of a monk Bénédictin of the Monastère of Ganagobie which accepted his confession that it never betrays. Gaston Dominici died in 1965, without one never knowing his degree of implication in triple murder of the Drummond family.

Contradictory theses

Many theses were emitted to explain the crime:

the official thesis, that of the crime passionnel;
the thesis of settlings of score post-resistance (Drummond, British secret agent, would have been liquidated).
the thesis of conflicts of family around the grand' ground;
the thesis of the patriarch showing facts to defend its family;

Criticisms of justice

The action of justice within the framework of this business was strongly criticized by the commentators.

Jean Giono will study in particular the differences between the language of marked (30 to 35 words according to him) and that of the indicters (several thousands of words). He wrote Notes on the business Dominici .

In a platform of the newspaper Le Monde , Maurice Boy of the French Academy written

Réflexions on a verdict

Nous will not discuss the verdict returned by the Court of Assizes in the business of Lurs. To have the right to form an opinion about a culpability it is necessary to have attended the debates, i.e. considering and to have heard the defendant and the witnesses, and to have listened to oneself the arguments produced by the charge and defense. We will not have imprudence to take party on the bottom even of the business. We will notice only that the accounts of all those which followed the debates agree on a point: they left these tumultuous audiences filled of strange a malaise.

However much think that condemned is guilty, without providing besides another thing which an impression, all are intended to say that one is far from knowing the truth and that it remains as well of obscure points as it is not impossible than a miscarriage of justice was made.
It is quite annoying that at the time when a judgment is handed down one can about it almost unanimously discuss the value. At least should one be able to answer that the fault is not with the justice, which was serene, and which, if the error constitutes one of the dangers of the human decisions, no reproach cannot be addressed to those which were charged to return it.
It should unfortunately be noted that Malayan precisely comes it from what as well irregularities was made as confidence fled. Here too a long time that we play Cassandre not to be obliged to mark with sadness how much this lawsuit, which so much upset the opinion and which scandalizes much in our Anglo-Saxon neighbors, is the logical result of all the abuses against which we did not cease protesting since so a long time.
All the irregularities and all the errors which we are discouraged from announcing vainly find joined together in a bouquet where no bad grass misses. It is there the cause of the faintness which is likely to throw the décri on justice.
As of the discovery of the crime the police force went on the spot. It was advisable to inquire immediately and to join together evidence. The role of the police force is difficult. It must be perspicacious, collect the indices, inform the judge of his discoveries and designate the possible culprit to him.
Never it must replace the magistrate to which it brings its suspicions and its scruples while remaining subjected, in the actual position of the law, with a rigorous secrecy. In the circumstance its desire of publicity brought it, day after day to give press conferences, to pose advantageously in front of the photographers, to announce for the shortly after sensational revelations and to lead the business to the manner of a black novel today so much to the mode. In turn, after interminable interrogations, the witnesses were designated as culprits. The culprits changed besides according to the days. The public statements, always in the direction of the charge, made in breach of professional secrecy, mislaid the opinion instead of reassuring it. As of the all beginning was distorted.
Instead of carrying out a true accusatory procedure, i.e. only based on the research of the evidence, one founded a race with the consent. The superstition of the consent that we so often denounced very dominated.
The interrogations continued without control, sometimes day and of night. From there of the consents, retractations, obvious lies, overcome reserves, to lead to a confusion of contradictory assumptions which did nothing but complicate the things. The law of 1897 on the contradictory instruction was violated. From the moment or one had consents, truths or forgery, it could not have doubts there any more about the inculpation. To avoid the control of lawyer one carried out reconstitutions before notifying the inculpation.
Then, after a long instruction which was only the repetition, become about useless, of the police investigation, the defendant was returned in front of the Court of Assizes, the principal load being the retracted consents and the charge of a witness taken in addition in red-handed of lie.
Never perhaps the law which amalgamated the magistrates of the court and sworn is not revealed also deplorable.
Was the business directed with impartiality? We will note only facts that all those pay which followed the lawsuit.
As of witnesses lied with impunity i.e. they misled justice. They recognized it themselves. Nevertheless one did nothing to repress the scandal of it. Undoubtedly article 822 of the criminal instruction code declares reproachable the close relations but it is of jurisprudence which they can be heard under oath if nobody made there opposition. The oath causes to make them liable to the sorrow of the false witness if they lie. In the species nobody made opposition. The court however refused to make lend oath. Thus justice accepted of a serene heart the production of false witnesses which admit lying rather than to require the respect of its audience.
Certain declarations which could show the uncertainty of the business were voluntarily curtailed, and the prosecuting attorney congratulated the president to have raised the audience at the time when a witness, décontenancé by a precise question, was about to pass from the consents which had disturbed the order envisaged of the program. The role of the president is impartialement to direct a debate which is established between the charge and defense. Up to one recent time it did not have to take party since it did not deliberate with not sworn. However the one century experiment showed that the presidents of sitted could not be solved to remain impartial. The code envisaged in the beginning that at the end of the debates the president had, to summarize the arguments for and against, in order to pose the problem well to be solved. However, in spite of the most pressing circulars one never managed to find presidents agree to make the share equal to the charge and defense. All or almost took party for the charge passionately, using of their prestige to impress sworn. It was an emulation between the president and the public ministry to obtain a judgment. The law of June 11th, 1881 had to prohibit the summary, which had become a pure scandal. The rapporteur of the law said to the room: “It would be a commonplace to raise the abuses, which resulted from summaries too often transformed into indictments per hour when defense is closed and more specific to disturb the conscience of sworn than to reassure them. It would be an illusion to hope on the warnings of the chiefs of the legal companies to retain the presidents of sitted within right limits. ”
If one thinks that the summary was public and that the control of the opinion still obliged with a certain decency, one can realize of what can become a summary made during a rigorously secret deliberation. Let us add that the debates must be oral and at one time that sworn could not consult the file during the deliberation. Today the president carries it with him to deliberate. What does one show with sworn? With which parts, undoubtedly contained in the file but about which nobody had spoken and on which defense was not explained, manages one to form their conviction?
So many irregularities and legal errors cannot be prolonged. We do not want any to draw that Dominici is innocent but we think that an legal action thus carried out leaves the anxious opinion.
To return justice is not only art to dispatch the lawsuits. It is also to continue the instruction and the debates with a rigor and an impartiality above suspicion. Such is not the impression which the verdict of the Court of Assizes of the Low-Alps leaves. It was a question of punishing a crime inexpiable. The horror which it causes is such as one does not imagine any pity for the assassin. However in interview granted to journalist some moments after stop public ministry, which had just obtained the head of that of which he had proclaimed with fire the culpability, said: “ the principle of the supreme punishment being acquired, the day when Dominici will require its grace I will be happy to give him an favorable opinion. ”
Triple crime of Lurs, punished for the principle, one does not include/understand any more. Strange declaration which lets bore If not a regret at least a doubt, which is not made to dissipate it Malayan and to reinforce the respect that one owes with the judged thing.

Documents inspired of the business

the film the Business Dominici (1973) with Jean Gabin;
the film the Business Dominici (2003) of Pierre Boutron - a telefilm left in Television serial with Michel Serrault and Michel Blanc. The telefilm takes as a starting point the book of William Reymond Dominici nonguilty, the found assassins which supports the discussed thesis according to which secret services were implied in this business.
the Dominici business: Appraise triple crime of Lurs ED. Routes of Warlike Eric, legal expert. A really exhaustive analysis of the business.
Dominici : it was a business of family (ED. archipelago) by Jean-Charles Deniau and Madeleine Sultan. Work which reports all the facts exhaustively.
Notes on the business Dominici , of Giono, already quoted
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