Evening Post. TUESDAY, AUGUST 31, 1926. MURDER AND- MOVIES,

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 53, 31 August 1926, Page 8

Evening Post. TUESDAY, AUGUST 31, 1926. MURDER AND- MOVIES,

"Nicaragua's revolution/ wrote the "Duluth News," three or four months ago, "is expected to cost 500,000 dollars. The movie rights ought to be worth that much." This comforting reflection is recalled by the episode-in tho Guyot trial of which an admirable report was cabled yesterday. On the stage such proceedings might have appeared too far-fetched to be funny. As part of the trial or preliminary hearing of a charge of murder in a civilised country they aro almost beyond belief. Transferred to the screen they would achieve a worldwide success- which could not fail to provide the French taxpayer with a handsome set-oil to the cost of crime, and if the example was followed in all suitable trials the movie rights might •wipe out the cost altogether. Is it too much to hope that the "horde of officials in twenty cars" who are said to have accompanied the prisoner to the scene of his alleged crime included a sufficient cinema staff? and that no "juge d'instruction" or trial judge will hereafter tie allowed to investigate a really thrilling crime without this necessary equipment? The procedure throughout was that of tho stage rather than tho Court. "The stage," said the same man who is credited by

some uncritical critics with having also written "Borneo and Juliet," "is more beholding to love than the life of man." The stage is certainly more beholden to these astonishing proceedings than the interests of justice, and as justice has already suffered its full penalty is there any valid reason why the stage should not reap its full reward ? The crime of which Guyot ia accused is the murder by strangling of a girl whose body was found in a burning hayrick at Meaux, near Paris. She had been driving with him in his motor-car, and it was an awkward coincidence for the prisoner that "both his wives died in mysterious eircum-

stances, while motoring with him." To visit tho scene of the tragedy was. doubtless a proper proceeding on tho part of tho Magistrate, though it does not appear that anything turns, or can possibly turn, on the lie of the country or the nature of the environment. But ho was not content to pick up whatever he could from a private inspection of the charred remains of tho haystack and its surroundings. It suited the police to have the ■whole circumstances of the crime reproduced as exactly as possible '' in situ,'' and whatever suits the police on these occasions suits the Magistrate also. Difficult as it is for us to realise, the Magistrate is just as, closely identified with a .French prosecution as the police. Both he and they display a partisanship and an animus which neither the public prosecutor nor the police would dare or desire to display under the British system, and this despite the fact that a "juge d'instruction " has far more important functions than our committing Magistrates, and instead of merely satisfying himself that there is a "prima facie" case, supplies in Ma report what is the most important ovidenee for the prosecution at the trial. The outrageous injustice of these preliminary proceedings in France has deeply impressed all British observers. The accused person, writes Mr. J. E. C. Bodley, is locked up in solitary confinement, cut off from communication with his family, and in private audience interrogated day after day by a Magistrate, who strives to extort an avowal. Meantime, all the forces of the police are at work to get up evidence against t!io untried' prisoner, of the nature of which he is kept ignorant; whilo the "juge d'instruction" in his interrogatories us,ps the craft of a skilled expert to drag damaging admissions from the mouth of tho man, bewildered with the isola* tion of captivity, sometimes browbeating him with throats, sometimes inventing the fiction that an accomplice has proved his guilt. During tho generation that has passed jincc Mr. Bodley wrote some slight improvement had been made, but even now Mr. Kobert Dell, who is so nearly a Frenchman that ho calls his book on France "My Second Country," is compelled to withhold his confidence from its administration of justice. Tho French criminal procedure, he says, is quite literally medieval —it is, in fact, the system of |he Inquisition almost unchanged. Iv theory, French, like English, law presumes an accused person to bo innocent until he is proved to bo guilty; in practice, French judges assume him to bo guilty until he has proved himself to be innocent. The accused is now supported by counsel in his dreaded interviews with the ' |uge d'instruction," but counsel may not bo present when the witnesses are being examined. Presumably the full-dress parade at Meaux would come under tho first of these heads, but wo hear nothing of counsel for the prisoner, and obviously his presence in the

car with his client and the police inspector must have gravely prejudiced the verisimilitude of tho proceedings.

As this part of the trial was conducted out of doors, it offered such an opportunity to the public as even the Paris Opera House could not have provided.

The event, saya pur report, closely resembled a superb holiday. The whole of the scenes were re-enacted. Guyot, who is charged with murdering the girl, himself accompanied a horde of officials in twenty cais. There were dense crowds of sightseers en route. Often at tho scene of the tragedy the proceedings were stopped to allow the examining Magistrate to question Guyot, affording the crowd a dress-circle view. Guyot was very calm, and related unemotionally tho whole of the events.

After overcoming the initial shock arising from the indecency of the whole proceedings one's first surprise comes in here. Why should Guyot open his" mouth at all, seeing that there was no accomplice in the case and therefore no question of turning informer, ajul his unemotional narrative could therefore only be of the nature of a confession which would fill any gaps in the evidence for the prosecution? And why could not a confession bo taken as effectively in Court as at the scene of the crime? It almost looks as though the prosecution desired to have tho confession corroborated by proof that it was not a confession of an impossibility, and Guyot himself was proud to show that ho was man enough to have done the deed literally single-handed. For the narrative proceeds:—

Three miles from tho spot the car was stopped, and tho handcuffs were removed from Guyot, who took the wheel in order to demonstrate on an inspector alongside how ho steered with one hand and gripped the girl's throat with tho other. The crowd overwhelmed the roadway, and tho Magistrate decided to postpone that particular incident.

The impatience of the crowd is a matter for regret rather than surprise. It is not surprising that they should be eager to see if the prisoner could show himself to be as good as his word and throttle the police inspector as he claimed to have throttled the girl. On the other hand, it is most unfortunate that tho proof was postponed and then left incomplete. How can a French Court which has carried realism so far be satisfied that the crime was committed as alleged without another corpse to put the point beyond a doubt? Realism was, however, allowed full scope by the thousands gathered near the scene of the crime.

Officers built a haystack which Guyot fired, in order that the gas escaping from it may be sampled to see if it is similar to that found in the girl's stomach.

Evidently a different kind of gas might have been generated if any hand but Guyot's had struck tho match. Or was it merely the movie rights that the Court had in view?