French Step Up Probe of Crash Fatal to Diana

With the combined powers of sheriff and inquisitor, two French magistrates on Tuesday descended for the first time into a dim underpass smelling of automobile exhaust to try to establish how and why Princess Diana died.

Lawyers for the wealthy family of the late princess’ companion, who was killed along with Diana in an Aug. 31 car crash, said they have obtained a photograph clearly showing the couple’s limousine being chased by photographers before the fatal high-speed smashup. A third posthumous blood test, meanwhile, confirmed that the driver of the car was legally intoxicated--as drunk, according to one expert, as if he had swallowed eight to nine beers, shots of whiskey or glasses of wine.

Reuters news agency, quoting a source close to the inquiry, said the new blood test also turned up traces of antidepressant drugs that could have boosted the effects of alcohol.

Nine days after Diana lost her life in the tunnel by the Seine, some of Britain’s newspapers were demanding an end to the dispute about what happened--and some clear answers. “The disgraceful delay is an insult,” the Sun wrote, the largest of the London tabloids. “This is no ordinary traffic accident the French are dealing with--it’s the one that killed our Princess.”

Crucial questions--including the part, if any, played in the accident by pursuing paparazzi--are still without definitive answers. But the French have firm ideas about how to administer justice, and the ongoing probe into the death of the 36-year-old Diana has been serving as a daily reminder.

About 10:15 a.m. Tuesday, two juges d’instruction, or examining magistrates, who are now directing the investigation, came for a look at the four-lane tunnel underneath the Place de l’Alma where Diana, her Egyptian beau, Dodi Fayed, and their driver, Henri Paul, 41, were killed or fatally injured. A bodyguard survived.

Traffic is usually heavy at that time of day, as the riverside expressway on the city’s Right Bank links central Paris with the city’s west and some of its suburbs.

Police, however, stopped traffic in both directions for more than half an hour so that magistrates Herve Stephan and Marie-Christine Devidal, who brought armfuls of documents and were accompanied by police detectives, could scrutinize the site where the Mercedes-Benz carrying Diana and the others slammed at high speed into a pillar.

The magistrates departed without talking to journalists. But their ability to cause a traffic snarl on a business day in the French capital spoke volumes about their important role in this country’s justice system.

In France, there is no grand jury, that panel of ordinary citizens that is one of the oldest and most cherished Anglo-Saxon bulwarks of liberty and due process, to determine whether someone should stand trial for an alleged offense.

Instead, in a tradition running back to the Renaissance reign of King Francis I, a special category of magistrate exists who, these days, is supposed to rule whether there has been a violation of the penal code; who the suspects are; and whether they should be turned over to a court for trial or the accusations against them should be dropped.

To make that decision, the magistrate conducts an inquiry, known in French as an instruction. He or she has the power to subpoena witnesses, issue search warrants, sift evidence collected by police, request forensic tests and order anything else necessary “for the manifestation of truth.”

These magistrates, sometimes called “little judges,” are supposed to listen to requests from the prosecutor’s office, a branch of the French government that answers to the Ministry of Justice--but can ignore them if they choose. They also work in secret.

“The process is a bit inquisitorial; there’s one man with so much power,” said Eric Lasry, a French attorney in the Paris office of the international law firm Baker & McKenzie. He likened the magistrate to a Wild West sheriff and medieval inquisitor rolled into one: an official who is empowered both to find out the truth and to throw people in jail if they get in the way.

“When you’ve had no prior contact with the judicial system and are basically honest, let me tell you: It’s very impressive to be brought in front of someone with so much power,” Lasry said.

In super-centralized France, the ability to say no to the government is a great rarity. So not surprisingly, a constellation of juges d’instruction have recently become cult heroes for going after business and political leaders of left and right involved in corruption.

“The politicians have always believed they were the only depositories of people’s confidence and that the tribunals and justice should depend on them,” Renaud Van Ruymbeke, one of the most celebrated of the crusading juges, told an American reporter during an interview earlier this year at his office in Rennes in Brittany. “It’s as if your [district] attorneys took instructions from the president of the United States. It will make you laugh, but that’s our system.”

Stephan, 43, the first magistrate appointed to probe Diana’s death, has a reputation for tight-lipped independence. Devidal was appointed later to assist him. Both have offices in the Palace of Justice on the Ile de la Cite, a vast complex that includes the gloomy cells where Marie-Antoinette and many other aristocrats were imprisoned during the French Revolution before being carted across the Seine to the present-day Place de la Concorde for guillotining.

In Diana’s death, Stephan so far has named nine photographers and a photo agency motorcyclist as official suspects on potential charges of involuntary manslaughter and failing to come to the aid of the people in the wrecked car.

Both charges carry a prison term of up to five years and a possible 500,000 francs ($83,000) in fines.

On Tuesday, one of the Fayed family’s lawyers, Bernard Dartevelle, said a picture had surfaced that proved some of the photographers had a hand in the fatal accident. According to Dartevelle, the photo, taken from close range, shows Paul dazzled by a camera flash, the bodyguard in the front passenger seat pulling down the sun visor, and Diana looking out the back, where “very distinctly,” according to Dartevelle, can be seen the yellow light of a motorcycle.

The lawyer did not say at what point on Paul’s ill-fated route the picture could have been snapped, but the family’s contention is that by pushing Paul, deputy security chief at the Ritz Hotel, to take risks, the paparazzi are to blame for the wreck.

According to Le Figaro newspaper, that’s not at all the thinking of Paris police. They appear to have discounted some witness reports that a car or motorcycle cut Paul off in the tunnel, the newspaper said.

The third post-mortem exam of the driver, undertaken at the request of Paul’s family, reconfirmed Tuesday that he had 1.80 grams of alcohol per liter of blood, or more than 3 1/2 times the legal level, sources said.

Psychiatrist Michel Craplet told the Agence France-Presse news agency that the level was the equivalent of eight to nine drinks for a person weighing 143 to 165 pounds. In the bloodstream of Paul, not a large man, so many drinks “modified his behavior from A to Z,” said Craplet, who works for the National Assn. for the Prevention of Alcoholism.

A British pathologist, Peter Vanezis, had said the first two French blood tests, which came up with readings of 1.75 and then 1.87 grams, were unreliable. The initial test was done at the Forensic Institute of Paris and the second at a private lab. The third sample, taken Friday, was ordered by Stephan. Judicial sources said the blood measured Friday came from a leg, while the first samples were from the heart.

Asked how long if could take to know for certain what happened in the wreck, a police spokeswoman said Tuesday that the investigation could take weeks, even months. Stephan’s clerk said her boss had nothing to say to the press. “It’s against regulations for him to talk about his findings, or even give his opinion,” she said by telephone.

The chief charge that may remain against the photographers is spelled out in Article 223-6 of the penal code, which makes it a crime “to abstain voluntarily from bringing . . . assistance to a person in peril.”

Legal experts have said it probably would have been enough for the photographers to have telephoned for help from the accident scene. But according to Le Parisien, another French daily, a review of cellular phone records turned up just one call. And in the confusion of the moment, the unidentified caller dialed “12’ (directory assistance) instead of “15” (emergency medical service), “17” (police) or “18” (fire department), the paper said.

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Magistrates Play Key Role

In the United States, panels of citizens known as grand juries conduct investigations into major crimes to see if acase should go on to trial. In France, that role is taken by the magistrate.

HOW FRENCH INVESTIGATIONS WORK

[1] Magistrate conducts an inquiry, known in French as an instruction. He or she is empowered to find out the truth and throw people in jail if they get in his way.

[2] The magistrate interviews witnesses, issue search warrants, request forensic tests and order anything else necessary to get to the truth.

[3] Determines that the penal code has been violated and sends the case to trial.

OR

Dismisses the case, removing it from the court system.

Source: Times Paris Bureau