“We must create a criminal memory within the prosecution,” said Jacques Dallest

• Jacques Dallest is at the origin of a working group at the Chancellery which should present in a few weeks recommendations to improve the judicial treatment of these unsolved cases.
• A report containing around twenty proposals will be submitted to the Minister of Justice in March.
• The magistrate proposes in particular to “specialize interregional poles on complex crimes, and to dedicate magistrates to these heavy cases”.

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These are matters that have obsessed the high magistrate for years. Crimes committed sometimes very long ago, the perpetrators of which have never been identified and brought to justice. Attorney General at the Grenoble Court of Appeal, Jacques Dallest has been leading a working group for nearly a year to reflect on the treatment of “cold cases”.

The magistrates, police officers, gendarmes and lawyers who make it up have made several proposals to prevent these often complex cases from falling into oblivion. A report will be submitted by the end of the month to the Minister of Justice, Eric Dupond-Moretti. Jacques Dallest unveils at 20 Minutes the main measures it contains.

In what framework was this working group, of which you are at the origin, launched?

Cold cases have been a topic of interest to me for a long time. I was an examining magistrate, public prosecutor, and I have known dozens of cases, murders, which we have not been able to elucidate. In 2018, I suggested to the Chancellery to think about improving the judicial treatment of “cold cases” because I noticed that we were not very efficient in this area, or at least that our judicial organization could be better.

This is the whole purpose of this group, composed of a dozen police officers, gendarmes, prosecutors, examining magistrates, lawyers, psychiatrists, and which began its work in October 2019. A report , which will contain about twenty proposals, should be returned in March to the Minister of Justice.

What are you proposing in this report?

Some proposals are simple and practical, others more ambitious to put in place and require a change in the law. This is particularly the case for the strong measure that we are supporting: specializing interregional centers on complex crimes, and dedicating magistrates to these heavy, long cases in which no one is indicted.

In my opinion, we must also succeed in instilling a “cold case” culture among judges. An examining magistrate, a prosecutor, is taken in by ordinary delinquency. And the files against X, of crime or of disappearance of person, are a little forgotten and are treated in time wasted. This is where we must evolve. We must create a criminal memory within the prosecution, ensure that the files are well digitized, that the seals are well preserved. You have to be able to find a file years later because the characteristic of a cold case is that it is spread out over time.

What is your definition of a cold case?

The word cold case doesn’t mean much. It could be a crime that is still being investigated because the perpetrator has not been identified, as in the Chevaline case. This is what I call the “living” cold case. And there is the “dead” cold case, that is to say a closed case, but which could be further exploited because it is not prescribed. We could rework it, consider new avenues. But you have to be clear-headed, there are a lot of cases that will never be clarified no matter what, because there are no elements in the file.

We can also add cases of disappearance. There are every day. Most are resolved. But frequently, some leave us helpless as long as there is no crime scene. Everything is possible, from the suicide of a depressed person, to accidental death, including voluntary or criminal disappearance. It is not easy to work on these cases.

What are the difficulties encountered in resolving this type of business?

Most of the time, in these cases, the perpetrators act on their own, unlike in cases of banditry. There is not necessarily a link between the victim and the perpetrator. They don’t confide in anyone, and can be smart enough to wipe out bodies. A rapist leaves his DNA on his victim’s body. If he makes it disappear, that’s one less evidence against him. Every week people are disappearing. Maybe they were killed but we will never know if they are not found.

Shouldn’t the DNA of missing persons be kept in a file, in order to possibly compare them to traces that would be found years later?

Things already exist. There is already the RPF (wanted persons file) which lists the cases of disappearance. And there is also the Fnaeg (Fnaeg). But this file only contains the DNA of the perpetrators, not that of the victims or missing persons. Here too, we are going to make proposals to improve the DNA census of missing persons, buried under X, or victims.

Several unsolved crimes may have been committed by the same perpetrator. Do we know how to work on serial killers in France?

We do it better today, precisely thanks to the use of DNA. We understood that there were serial killers in France. We must therefore focus on people and not just the crimes they commit. We believe there are people with heavy sentences who have no doubt killed other people. We must continue to work on them, on their life course, to see if before their arrest, they would not have committed other crimes.

We can try to trace all the movements of these people and try to find elements involving them, because it is not because you have been in an area where there has been a murder that you are the perpetrator.

Does justice have the means to do all this?

Additional human resources will inevitably be necessary so as not to overburden people who already have a lot of work. If we create a specialized center, we will need magistrates who will do just that.

But I think it’s mostly a question of culture. We need to be more attentive to the civil parties, that families are regularly informed of the progress of a case, that we ask them if they are thinking of leads … Justice is sometimes distant, inhuman, when they are people who have lost a loved one. These files must be treated as a priority; they deserve our full attention and that we acquire all the modern means to move forward. But it’s not as easy as in the playoffs.

Is it necessary for this to improve the management of seals?

The characteristic of a criminal, especially if he has premeditated his act, is that he will do everything to not be caught. Some are lucky because there are no witnesses on the day of the incident. There can be fatal encounters. But if the author does not leave traces, biological or otherwise, it will be difficult to confuse him insofar as the victim’s life says nothing about his author. It is therefore necessary to store, trace and preserve all the seals over a very long period of time.

The evolution of science policing allows us, thanks in particular to DNA, to get out of business that we could not previously elucidate. Hence the interest in keeping the exhibits well in order to be able to use them later. Today we are still working on seals concerning the affair of little Grégory in 1984! Perhaps in 2040, we will have better techniques than today to exploit them and obtain meaningful things. As long as you have exhibits, there aren’t always any.

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