Lynley Hood is a Dunedin author. She wrote A City Possessed, the acclaimed 2001 book on the Christchurch Civic Creche abuse case which cast significant doubt on the conviction of Peter Ellis.
OPINION: “A City Possessed is the New Zealand equivalent of Zola’s J’Accuse,” said the reader. “I hope it will do for Peter Ellis and the four women what the French book did for Dreyfus.”
In the 122 years since the Dreyfus case, studies of miscarriages of justice have shown that, while the details vary, wrongful convictions have many predisposing factors and immediate causes in common.
The Dreyfus case had them all: social, political and religious tensions, community anxiety, prejudice. The case followed other scandals. Evil seemed everywhere. The need for a scapegoat kicked in.
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Then, as now, you can tell by the high-pitched intensity of the debate – the foam-flecked arguments, the inflammatory media stories, the sulphurous whiff of folklore in the gossip – that, from somewhere deep in the human psyche, elemental forces have been unleashed.
In high profile criminal cases of this sort, the accused becomes much more than the alleged perpetrator of an alleged crime. He or she becomes evil personified.
During the Dreyfus case, the press played the gamut of public emotions: anti-Semitism, political intrigue, espionage, religious bigotry, traditional values.
When the tabloids presented sensational lies as definitive proof, enraged mobs rioted in the streets. Claims that Captain Alfred Dreyfus was innocent were said to be a conspiracy of Jews and Freemasons designed to destroy the French Republic.
The Dreyfus case was about the harm done to innocent people by decision makers who are more interested in covering their backs and not rocking the boat, than in doing justice.
Initially, the army genuinely believed that Dreyfus was guilty. Within two years they knew they’d made a terrible mistake, but the generals ignored the evidence and punished the officers who alerted them to it, and they left Dreyfus to rot.
The Dreyfus family kept up the pressure, and gradually concern began to spread.
After a succession of outrageous cover-ups, celebrities, writers and other prominent citizens gathered to support Dreyfus. When the real traitor was acquitted in a secret court martial, Zola wrote J’Accuse.
Zola’s masterpiece deserves to be re-read each year (like Dicken’s Christmas Carol is enjoyed anew each Christmas). In addition to it’s literary value, J’Accuse reminds us that the characters and patterns in miscarriages of justice are remarkably similar.
There’s the obsessive investigating officer-in-charge who takes the wrong turning on day one, and keeps going.
There are dishonest experts who use pseudoscience to support an unsupportable case.
There are senior officers who, having failed to prevent a miscarriage of justice, lack the courage to correct it. So they cover it up instead.
In J’Accuse, Zola named those responsible for the injustice, and itemised their wickedness, negligence, stupidity, religious fervour and demented flights of fancy. He concluded:
“I am fully aware that my action comes under Articles 30 and 31 of the law of 29 July 1881, which makes libel a punishable offence. I deliberately expose myself to that law.
“As for the persons I have accused, I do not know them. I have never seen them. I feel no rancour or hatred towards them. To me, they are mere embodiments of social malfeasance.
“I have but one goal: that light be shed. My ardent protest is a cry from my very soul. Let them dare to summon me before a court of law! Let the inquiry be held in broad daylight! I am waiting.”
Three weeks later Zola’s libel trial began. Anti-Semitic crowds mobbed the court. Riots erupted. Zola was convicted. He appealed. He was granted a re-trial, and convicted again.
Meanwhile, the Dreyfus case continued to unravel. Dreyfus was granted a retrial, and convicted again. Then in 1899 the French government pardoned him, and in 1906 the French Supreme Court of Appeals declared him innocent.
But none of the officers responsible for framing Dreyfus, or for the subsequent cover-up, were made accountable for their actions.
In 1984, the French Army refused to allow a government-commissioned statue of Dreyfus to be installed in the courtyard of the Ecole Militaire.
In 1994, the editor of an army publication was forced into premature retirement following the uproar created by his suggestion that Dreyfus’s innocence was no more than a theory.
But in 1995, a general in full dress uniform publicly declared that Dreyfus was the innocent victim of a military conspiracy, and in 1998 Jacque Chirac marked the centennial of the publication of J’Accuse with a generous public response to Zola’s famous open letter to the President.
Behind that belated public response lies the long-term legacy of J’Accuse. Dreyfus was exonerated. He was reinstated in the army, promoted, and awarded the Legion of Honour.
Furthermore, instead of destroying the French Republic, the Dreyfus Affair strengthened it.
Legislation was passed separating church and state. The army and the judiciary restored their blemished dignity from within. The media became a watchdog for civil rights.
The Dreyfus Affair inspired people from all social, religious and political backgrounds to work together in the name of truth and justice.
The League for Human and Civic Rights formed by Emile Zola, Anatole France, Marcel Proust and others in response to the Dreyfus case paved the way for the international human rights movements we know today.
Ultimately, the Dreyfus Affair showed the world that facing up to miscarriages of justice, instead of trying to bury them, can do nothing but good. The publication of J’Accuse on January 13, 1894 is now recognised as one of proudest moments in the conscience of humankind.
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