Bete noire. "Condemned to Plead", Éric Dupond-Moretti, Stéphane Durand-Souffland

Praised by his admirers, criticized by many magistrates, the "Black Beast" of the courts explains himself for the first time.

No, he is not fascinated by evil, but he defends both the presumption of innocence and the right—for criminals of all stripes—to a just sentence that does not vary from double to single from one assize court to another. No, he is not the enemy of magistrates, but he questions the absence of the notion of humanity in their oath, whereas it appears in that of lawyers. For those who entrust their fate to him are also human beings, whose life story sometimes has enough to inspire some clemency in jurors. No, he is not against the State, but he is often revolted by the functioning of Justice. As no one has done before, he recounts the small arrangements, influences, and pitfalls that can bias a verdict. Through anecdotes and edifying memories of the great assize trials in which he participated, he paints a portrait of an implacable judicial system, in which the defense is barely tolerated, even when it desperately tries to avoid miscarriages of justice.

"I decided to become a lawyer at fifteen. It was July 28, 1976, and I had heard on the radio that Christian Ranucci, the 'red sweater' man, had been executed at dawn. This is not the story of a vocation that I am telling here, but of a kind of fate. I am condemned to plead."