Présomption d’innocence

Présomption d’innocence is the principle that a person accused of a crime must not be treated as guilty before the justice system has determined the case. In the story of Alexandre Farel, it is both a legal safeguard and a public argument: his defense invokes it against premature condemnation, while the novel places that claim beside the complainant’s account, the trial’s contested evidence, and the lasting consequences of the proceedings. The distinction between an accusation, a public verdict, and a judicial finding remains central to the case.

Legal Principle and Procedural Setting

After Alexandre’s arrest, an investigating judge tells him that he is considering formally charging him with rape. Alexandre denies the accusation and insists that he is innocent. His lawyer, Maître Célérier, argues that the evidence is not yet certain and that investigators must establish what happened. The judge nevertheless formally charges Alexandre, but does not remand him to custody; he is released under judicial supervision.

That release is conditional rather than unrestricted. Alexandre must not approach Mila Wizman or leave France. The proceedings continue for two years, with summonses, expert consultations, police inquiries, interviews, and a further confrontation with Mila. His defense also seeks to have the case reclassified as sexual assault and handled in a lower court, but the civil party refuses, and the matter proceeds to the assize court. These steps show the principle operating within a process that neither immediately convicts Alexandre nor frees him from the constraints and uncertainty of an unresolved prosecution.

The Principle Under Public Pressure

By the time the trial opens, the case has become a prominent public spectacle. In the climate following the Weinstein revelations, women are speaking publicly about sexual violence, and the Farel case receives extensive media attention. Outside the courthouse, demonstrators and activists carry signs and photographs condemning Alexandre before the court has reached a verdict. Maître Célérier argues in interviews that public opinion has already judged his client and may contaminate the trial.

The novel also gives this public pressure a personal dimension through Claire Farel. Though she believes her son’s claim of innocence, she has declined to sign public statements and remains silent as public debate gathers force. She experiences that silence as a private failure and betrayal of her ideals. Her position underscores a tension the story does not reduce to a simple opposition: defending the presumption of innocence can be presented as a legal necessity, while silence about the surrounding debate can carry its own moral cost.

Consequences for Alexandre

The judicial restrictions have consequences beyond the courtroom. Alexandre cannot continue his planned studies at Stanford or pursue the future he had imagined in the United States. He tries to continue his engineering studies in Paris, but describes being harassed and threatened, and eventually stops attending. Online abuse grows severe enough that he closes his accounts; he says some people called for his murder. In court, women in the audience heckle him when he speaks of being lynched, and the presiding judge has to restore order.

His release under supervision also changes after he encounters Mila by chance along the Canal Saint-Martin. He approaches her unexpectedly; she screams and tries to get away. He grabs her by the shoulders and shakes her, and passersby call the police. Alexandre is arrested, his judicial supervision is revoked, and he is imprisoned at Fresnes. At trial, his father describes the consequences of imprisonment and public condemnation, while Maître Célérier argues that the media has already destroyed Alexandre’s prospects. These consequences do not establish whether the underlying accusation is true; they make visible the human cost that the defense associates with public judgment before a court’s decision.

Competing Uses in the Courtroom

The principle is invoked by different participants for different purposes. During Alexandre’s initial appearance, Maître Célérier emphasizes that the investigation has not yet established certainty. Later, he argues that the defense must be allowed to speak even in a moment when women’s testimony is gaining public recognition. He asks the jurors to distinguish a legal judgment from moral or political allegiance and to assess Alexandre’s actions rather than decide the case as a referendum on the movement for women to speak about sexual violence.

His closing argument connects this appeal to the phrase “real justice,” which he contrasts with judgment by social media. He says that online condemnation has damaged the presumption of innocence and points to the search association of Alexandre’s name with the word “rapist.” At the same time, the prosecutor acknowledges Alexandre’s fear of remaining in prison and raises the question of his eventual reintegration, while also emphasizing Mila’s experience and the difficulty of speaking about it. The principle therefore appears not as a demand to disregard suffering, but as a dispute about what evidence can establish and what a jury is being asked to decide.

Uncertainty and Narrative Significance

The novel does not make the defense’s appeal equivalent to a demonstration of Alexandre’s innocence. Maître Célérier maintains that Alexandre has consistently denied rape and argues that the evidence does not establish coercion. The prosecutor, by contrast, accepts that the sexual encounter occurred and characterizes the central difficulty as understanding the passage from Alexandre’s social identity to the alleged crime. Mila’s distress and the competing accounts remain part of the courtroom record, rather than disappearing when the defense invokes a legal safeguard.

In his final argument, Maître Célérier says that uncertainty will remain and distinguishes judicial truth from the two parties’ subjective truths. His formulation captures the principle’s force and its limits in the novel: an accused person should not be convicted by public anger, but a demand for impartial judgment does not itself settle what happened. By placing the presumption of innocence amid formal procedure, media outrage, unequal social circumstances, and incompatible testimony, the story treats it as a necessary rule of judgment—and as a phrase whose invocation cannot substitute for the judgment the evidence must support.