We have forgotten it now, but in 1791 the criminal jury was an innovation every whit as audacious as the Declaration of the Rights of Man. Men had to learn to judge by other lights; and the first departmental tribunals did not all master the art at the first stroke. The case of Pierre Le Gueur, arraigned for murder before the criminal court of Morbihan, stands as eloquent proof.
At the session of April 12, 1791, a witness, François Bossalo, delivered before the trial jury a deposition diametrically opposed to the one he had previously rendered before the director of the grand jury in the district of Lorient. The public prosecutor took high umbrage, demanding that this fresh deposition be committed to paper to establish its falsehood on the record. The presiding judge went one better: he had Bossalo placed under arrest on the spot, that an indictment might be drawn up against him on the charge of these two contradictory statements, and the whole business remitted to the director of the jury at Vannes. A second witness very nearly suffered the same fate, escaping it only by amending his testimony.
One sees the scene through the eyes of the Ancien Régime: a witness wavers, ergo he lies, ergo he is clapped in irons. The Court of Cassation viewed it through the eyes of the new order—and therein lies the singular interest of its ruling of June 15, 1791.
The written declarations of witnesses, the court recalled, must neither be laid before the grand jury nor read out to the trial jury; the presiding magistrate may consult them solely for his own information. The jurors are bound to weigh only those depositions delivered *viva voce* in their presence; all anterior statements are null and void in their eyes, and can under no circumstances be set against what is uttered in open court. For, declared the tribunal, witnesses at the hearing enjoy full and untrammeled liberty to heed the promptings of their conscience and render to the truth the perfect homage that is its due.
By arresting Bossalo for having altered his story, the presiding judge had ruled, in effect, that the written page must override the spoken word. The Court of Cassation quashed the record of the proceedings and the verdict that had ensued.
The *Gazette* does not relate which of the two Bossalos spoke the truth—the one in the magistrate’s chambers or the one at the bar—nor what became of Pierre Le Gueur, who had to be tried anew. It preserves only this principle, which has not aged a day: a witness may err the first time, and justice must leave him the right to catch himself up.
Gazette des nouveaux tribunaux, 1791, Tribunal de cassation, ruling of June 15, 1791 (Case of Pierre Le Gueur, Criminal Court of Morbihan).