Jaccoud affair
The jaccoud case (the case Jaccoud in murder case Zumbach was) a Swiss Justice case that occurred in the 1960s and in which the Geneva Bar Pierre Jaccoud was sentenced for manslaughter to seven years in prison.
Zumbach murder case
On May 1, 1958, the seventy-year-old agricultural machinery dealer Charles Zumbach was brutally murdered in his house in the Geneva suburb of Plan-les-Ouates . When his wife got home, she heard four shots and shouts for help. Shortly afterwards she was pushed into the garden by a stranger and shot down. Later she couldn't remember the perpetrator. The perpetrator - there may have been several - then turned back to Charles Zumbach, whom he murdered with a few dagger stabs before he rode away on a bicycle.
Zumbach ran an agricultural machinery business in Plan-les-Ouates, which was also the headquarters of a gang of international criminals and arms dealers led by a former French Foreign Legionnaire named Reymond.
Pierre Jaccoud is drawn into it
When the police heard Zumbach's son André, he said that he had received two phone calls to his place of work on a Geneva radio station on the same night - but each time the caller hung up without speaking. André Zumbach suspected that the caller wanted to make sure that he was not with his parents and suspected the prominent lawyer and politician Pierre Jaccoud of the calls. He had a relationship with Linda Baud, who worked at the radio station as chief secretary, for eight years. Baud is now his fiancée and wants to part with Jaccoud. Jaccoud wrote numerous desperate letters to try to change her mind and, when that did not help, sent anonymous nude photos and anonymous letters to her fiancé eight months before the crime (the witness Yolande Heury later testified that she had written letters sent by Jaccoud had been dictated).
The police now suspected Jaccoud of the act and it was assumed that he had actually not wanted to kill Charles, but his son André Zumbach. Jaccoud's apartment was searched in his absence (he was Vice-President of the Chamber of Commerce on a trip to Stockholm). There were traces of blood on a coat and on a Moroccan dagger owned by Jaccoud, but Jaccoud and the victim had the same blood group zero. In addition (according to the later controversial report by the Basel hematologist Erik Undritz ), fresh liver cells were found on the dagger cord (the liver of the killed Zumbach had a stab wound). Jaccoud owned two pistols, but they were not the murder weapon. There was also a button on the street with the Zumbachs that matched one of Jaccoud's coats that he put in the old clothes collection and that was missing a button. During the search of the house, Jaccoud's bicycle was also seized, which he is said to have ridden to the crime scene. Upon his return in June 1958, Jaccoud was arrested. Jaccoud suffered a nervous breakdown in prison and was mostly in the infirmary.
The process
After the prosecutor general of Geneva, Charles Cornu , had brought charges against Jaccoud, the trial took place on January 18, 1960 before a jury in Geneva. The case also caused a sensation beyond the Swiss borders. Jaccouds main defender was the Parisian star attorney René Floriot , on the side of the prosecution stood the prosecutor Charles Cornu. Zumbach's wife did not recognize Jaccoud during a confrontation (she identified a police officer), and Linda Baud admitted that at the time of the crime she was no longer with André Zumbach, but with someone else. Nonetheless, Jaccoud was ultimately sentenced to seven years in prison for simple manslaughter. The jury only deliberated for three hours. For the Paris press the case was a typical Swiss compromise and Jaccoud a victim of the Calvinist morality of the Geneva people, who saw their city tainted by it. Angry students then burned Paris newspapers in front of the court. In 1980 Jaccoud's appeal was ultimately rejected.
Controversial judgment
The judgment is one of the most controversial Swiss judgments, or, in other words, un des dossiers "les plus troublants, les plus énigmatiques qui aient jamais défrayé la chronique judiciaire de [la Suisse]" . Gerhard Mauz considered the case to be a second " Dreyfus case ". Horace Mastronardi regarded the affair in 1976 as "the greatest miscarriage of justice of the post-war period".
According to Hans Martin Sutermeister, it was a miscarriage of justice , the main cause of which was inadequate and faulty forensic medical expertise. For a long time, the Bern doctor endeavored to take part in the work of prominent forensic scientists and coroners who were involved, including as an expert on the prosecution Pierre Hegg (director of the Geneva police laboratory and head and coordinator of the scientific investigations, which mainly focus on the Investigations and statements by Undritz supported), in this case, to prove “the intrusion of dilettantism into forensic medicine” and even had to defend himself in a Zurich court against the accusation of having defamed them as “irresponsible non-experts”. Sutermeister managed to have the case rolled up (several times). Sutermeister's main argument was aimed at allegedly careless blood tests:
“The trial observer Sutermeister, however, did not want to please the investigative methods of colleague Hegg, 'an autodidact without thorough training who was often wrong'. Of course, he would never have taken a critical look at Hegg's methods of investigation had he not been convinced from the outset that Jaccoud was innocent. [...] Charles Zumbach was murdered for delivering explosives to the Algerian rebels for $ 12,000 that did not detonate. On this track, the amateur detective finally came across a gang of international crooks and arms dealers who had liked to choose Charles Zumbach's garage as their headquarters. Led by the former Indochina legionnaire Reymond, the gang - undoubtedly without Zumbach's knowledge - also kept daggers and knives in the garage, which Sutermeister said could be murder weapons. "
In addition to Hegg and Honorary Lecturer Undritz, the hematologist Albert Alder from Aarau, Professors Bock from Marburg and Moureau from Liège also acted as experts in the prosecution . Above all, the defense had questioned the blood trace examination by Undritz and called in renowned forensic doctors such as Roger Le Breton , Anton Werkgartner and Wolfgang Maresch, who were not very familiar with Undritz's methodology .
filming
In the series Fernsehpitaval the television of the GDR in 1974 was directed Wolfgang Luderers the case taken up under the title "The nudes".
literature
- Jürgen Thorwald : The hour of the detectives. Becomes and worlds of criminology. Droemer Knaur, Zurich and Munich 1966, pp. 208–264.
- Stéphane Jourat : L'Affaire Jaccoud . Fleuve noir , 1992.
- Ursula von Kardorff : Jaccoud's murderous matter - the “trial of the year” . In: Die Zeit , No. 7/1960.
Web links
- L'Affaire Poupette, Time Magazine, February 1, 1960.
- The Verdict . In: Time, February 15, 1960 (English).
- Pierre Jaccoud protests his innocence and interview with Linda Baud (“Poupette”), TV broadcast on ORTF , archive of the Institut national de l'audiovisuel , Paris.
Remarks
- ^ French: Affaire P. Jaccoud (Jürgen Thorwald (1966), p. 208 f.) Or L'Affaire Jaccoud .
- ↑ by L'Affaire Poupette . In: Time Magazine, February 15, 1960, trial report.
- ↑ a b c A certain smile . In: Der Spiegel . No. 45 , 1960, pp. 71 ( online ).
- ↑ Jaccoud called Linda Baud "Poupette" , which is why the affair was also z. B. was named in Time Magazine "Affaire Poupette"
- ↑ The attempt to retrieve the nude photos was accepted as the motive for the intrusion. The 1950s. A dramatic decade in pictures. Ringier documents, Ringier Zurich n.d., p. 53.
- ^ Comité de Servis Industriel
- ↑ The Verdict . In: Time Magazine, February 15, 1960.
- ↑ Sylvie Arsever : Affaire Jaccoud: l'ombre d'un doute? In: Le Temps , July 9, 2007.
- ↑ Gerhard Mauz: A murder, a button and Calvin's ghost . In: Der Spiegel . No. 14 , 1965, p. 119 ( online ).
- ^ Roger d'Ivernois : Après la démission de deux juges à la Cour de cassation: Les défenseurs de Pierre Jaccoud cherchent un Zola moderne . ( Memento of the original from March 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Journal de Genève , June 1, 1976, page 12.
- ↑ Hans Martin Sutermeister : Summa Iniuria: A Pitaval der Justizirrtäne - five hundred cases of human error in the area of justice from a criminal and social psychological point of view . Elfenau, Basel 1976, page 124.
- ↑ Jürgen Thorwald (1966), p. 208 f.
- ↑ Special - Fernsehpitaval, Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv 2006, p. 11 ( Memento of the original from May 18, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 746 kB).
