Published on 1 September 2012 by Thomas Caveng

The Jean-Marie Deveaux case and its consequences on the French indemnification system

The French print and radio press recently looked back at the so-called Jean-Marie Deveaux case, known as one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in French history.

In 1963, Jean-Marie Deveaux, a retailer butcher helper, is sentenced to twenty years of prison for the murder of his employers’ daughter. After a long judicial fight led by André Soulier, Jean-Marie Deveaux is retried in 1969 and finally acquitted.

This case, that hit the headlines for many months in the late 1960’s, is directly at the origin of the 1970 French Indemnification Act which provides for the indemnification of people charged or sentenced wrongly, whose one of the main instigators was André Soulier.