Registres des arrêts rendus par la cour de justice du département de la Seine (Z/6/2001-2056)

The Court of Justice of the Seine was one of the “exceptional jurisdictions” that were created even before Paris was liberated by a decree dated June 26, 1944, issued by the provisional government of France to punish collaboration with the Gemans occupying forces or the Vichy government. The court was composed of 5 members – a Presiding Judge and 4 members of the jury. The members of the jury were selected from a list of citizens whose names were submitted by the liberation committees in each département. These citizens were found never to have collaborated with the German occupying forces or with the Vichy government. The first president of the Court of Appeals and two representatives from the liberation committees selected the jury together. A government commissioner was also part of the judicial organization. A "juge d’instruction" or investigating magistrate, with the help of the judicial section of the police, investigated the case to see if it could be brought to trial. The courts of justice were responsible for trying those who, between June 16, 1940, and the Liberation (in Paris, it was August 25, 1944), committed acts whose intention was to favor the enemy in any way (infraction of the Penal Code, article 75). It could pronounce the same sentences as a criminal court (“cours d’assises”) (prison, fines, confiscation of all or parts of an individual’s property currently owned or to be received in the future, forced labor, death sentences) . Anyone who was found guilty was condemned to a state of “national indignity”, which deprived him of the right to vote, run for office, or hold a job with the state. The sentences which were appealed first were judged on whether there were any abnormalities in the way the trial was conducted or the evidence that was admitted. There were also appeals to be pardoned. A certain number of the accused were pardoned by a general amnesty on January 5, 1951 and their sentences reduced and the effects of “national degradation” were limited. Another decree on August 6, 1953 also amnestied many of the accused. The Court of Justice of the Département of the Seine sat between October 17, 1944 and January 31, 1951. Later, those who had been judged in abstentia and were eventually found were tried before another court.