Appeal faxed by suspect was not received due to court’s fax machine running out of toner.
The Telegraph reported that a 24 year-old man suspected of murdering DJ Claudy Elisor in Seine-Saint-Denis, north-east Paris in 2010 has been able to walk free from court after the appeal he faxed to the court was not received in time due to the court’s fax machine running out of toner.
By French law, the courts are required to respond to a faxed appeal against imprisonment within 20 days of it being sent. However, the court in this case did not receive the appeal because the fax machine had run out of toner and staff did not know where to buy new cartridges due to the machine being old. As a result the court had no choice but to release the suspect, known only as Amadou F.
Amadou F had been in prison awaiting trial for the murder of Elisor, who was lynched while working as a DJ at a private New Years Eve party in 2010.
Widow of Elisor, Fabienne, who reportedly intends to file a complaint against the decision, said: “This man has been freed for a problem of fax ink. I am disgusted. I don’t understand how such a thing can happen […] what am I going to tell my children? I am appalled at the attitude of the justice system to us.”
However, the suspect’s lawyers Peggy Julien and Gilles-Jean Portejoie defended the decision, commenting: “Criminal code procedure states that if the expiry date is passed, the sanction is the immediate release of the detainee, bar an unpredictable, insurmountable event external to the state justice system […]the judges applied the law, there’s nothing astonishing about that.”