Seznec business

The business Seznec défraie the French legal chronicle since 1923.

The business

Joseph Marie Guillaume Seznec, born in 1878, with Plomodiern, in the Finistere, Master of sawmill with Morlaix, was recognized guilty of forgery in private writing and the murder of the wood merchant Pierre Quéméneur, general adviser of Finistere in addition. This last had curiously disappeared in the night from May 25th to May 26th, 1923 during a business trip accomplished from Brittany to Paris with Seznec, voyage related (according to Seznec) to the sale with the Soviet Union of the stocks of cars reassigned in France by the American army after the first world war. However, even if several plausible assumptions can be advanced as for this disappearance, and although the body was never found, only that of the murder were retained. Being the last person to have seen alive Quéméneur, Seznec became the principal suspect, it was stopped, accused and imprisoned.

Its lawsuit, during which nearly 120 witnesses were heard, lasted eight days, and ended on November 4th, 1924. Seznec was then recognized guilty, but premeditation being drawn aside, was condemned to the forced labors with perpetuity (the prosecuting attorney had asked for the capital punishment). It was then led to the Camp of Transportation of Saint-Laurent-of-Maroni the in 1927, then transferred to the Bagne from the Îles from the Hello in French Guiana in 1928.

Profiting from a handing-over of sorrow in May 1947, it returned in metropolis the following year. In 1953, in Paris, it was reversed by a van which escaped. Found, its driver claimed that it did not have anything considering. Seznec died on February 13rd 1954 of the continuations of its wounds.

A miscarriage of justice?

During all its lawsuit and during the years that it remained to him to live, Seznec did not cease protesting its innocence. Thanks to the combat of his descendants, in particular its grandson Denis Her-Seznec, justice was constantly solicited to reopen the file in order to bleach it charges carried against him and to obtain his rehabilitation. So far, all the attempts (14 on the whole) failed.

The Commission of revision of the penal judgments however accepted, on April 11th, 2005, to reopen the file of the sentence for murder of Guillaume Seznec. This decision could open the way with a possible cancellation of the judgment pronounced in 1924 in its opposition. The Court of criminal appeal of the Court of appeal, ruling like court of revision, examined this file on October 5th, 2006.

At the time of this audience, the Prosecuting attorney Jean-Yves Launay required the benefit of the doubt to the profit of Guillaume Seznec, evoking more particularly the possibility of a police machination: the training inspector Pierre Bonny (future assistant twenty years later of Henri Lafont, the chief of the Gestapo Frenchwoman) of which the hierarchically superior, the Vidal police chief, was in charge of the investigation. On his side the adviser rapporteur Jean-Louis Castagnède supported the opposite opinion, asserting on the one hand that this handling seemed improbable to him because of the low number of acts establish by Bonny and, on the other hand, that the expertises requested by the court of appeal had established that Guillaume Seznec was well the author of the false commitment to sell of the property of Quéméneur located with Plourivo.

The December 14th 2006, the cancellation of the judgment of Seznec was refused by the Court of revision which estimated that there was no new element likely to give birth to the doubt about the culpability of Guillaume Seznec. This business seems closed, a new request for revision being improbable. The Seznec family had initially expressed the intention to seize the European Cour of the human rights, but on the councils of its lawyers, it gave up it.

Many works were published since of tens of years on this business and Yves Boisset drew from it a film the Business Seznec in 1992, with Christophe Malavoy in the main role.

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