I think you should say convicted instead of condemned. It's not really wrong, but condemned has many other connotations, which makes it less clear. It's not the first time he's convicted in court overall, but it's the first time for this charge.
Please, can you explains the difference between "convicted" and "condemned"? Convicted is about the fact of been a criminal and condemned about the fact that you have a condamnation/conviction/sentence?
Apparently, in English, convicted means that someone has been officially declared guilty of some crime. After being convicted comes being sentenced, which is when the punishment is set.
On the other hand, condemned is specifically about being sentenced to death -or sometimes life in prison or some similarly hard punishment-. Which is also why a building is said to be condemned when it is set to be demolished.
In Spain, in a legal context, it's either condenado (condemned) or sentenciado (sentenced) more or less indistinctly. I have the impression we use a lot of words without much care for details.
Out of that context, it's usually condenado the one used.
Condemned has many other connotations which get in the way. "She condemned him" (she declared that he was reprehensible). "We condemn racism" (We really don't like racism). "Eternal condemnation" (Going to hell). And other meanings I'm sure that I'm not aware of.
"Convicted" is a neutral, technical term meaning "a court found him guilty of that crime". "Condemned" can mean the same thing, with the added tone "the crime was particularly heinous or immoral, and he got served with a fitting, just and hard punishment". It includes a moral judgement about the crime and about the deservedness of the punishment. There are also meanings of "condemned" that are used in a religious context (so the same as above, but without the court of law) like "the sinner is condemned to hell for all eternity", "sisyphos was condemned to eternal useless labor". Metaphorically, it can also be used to describe someone without the power to exact punishment just telling off somebody for their immoral behaviour, like "the newspaper article condemned his doings as acts of barbarism".
The general difference is that "convicted" is neutral in tone. "Condemned" includes a particular tone, and religious and moral connotations, which might be unfitting in some cases.
Edit: Take the above with some grain of salt, might be at least incomplete, maybe somewhat wrong. After consulting the internet, I've found out that there are even more meanings and nuances, which I didn't know about. Sorry for being an arrogant non-native-speaker trying to score internet points ;)
His case is going to appeal but the court decided to still jail him now "provisionally" (exécution provisoire), which sounds like a political play. Coincidentally, the same is happening to Le Pen with respect to the decision to ban her from elections...
As for "delaying" the case, this is just the French court system for you. Everything takes years and years.
Why would he have a treatment of favor? Almost every person convicted in his situation has a an execution provisoire, there's no special treatment here.
Same for lepen.
Let's put things straight, both of them are criminals, giving them a treatment of favor would be insane.
And to show how morally corrupted they are, both of them have been really loud about a no tolerance justice system. I guess that speaks for itself.
My understanding with Le Pen is that she used funds that were earmarked for he EU parliament staff to pay the salary of someone on her regular staff. I find it hard to believe that similar errors weren’t made by people the French establishment simply like more than her. Calling her a morally corrupt criminal for that is pretty obviously political, and if its political, it should be decided by a vote (which she would win)
She didn't simply used EU money to pay her party staff, she was the head of a stealing EU money system while also saying that EU costs to much to France.
Not only is she a morally corrupt criminal but also a corrupter. It was not a mistake she made, she was not alone and all convicted members of her party were fully aware they were committing a massive fraud.
Saying that is was an error and the trial was political, is plain disinformation.
He should definitely be in jail, as some of the things he's been charged with, and also in other cases sentenced for, were conspiracies to rig his trials and attempts to lean on witnesses, in cases including, but not limited to, this very trial [1]. Him being behind bars is necessary to stop his attempts to rig his own trial.
It is not political play. This is FUD spread by his political supporters.
The "exécution provisoire" is a measure that was introduced when his own party was in power, to make sure that terrorists were jailed immediately. He happened to be condemned for breaching the same law (association de malfaiteurs) that is used against terrorists.
I once read a comment by a lawyer that he was amazed by the number of politicians who ended up being caught by laws they had voted for. This is what happened here.
In fact when he was president he implemented another law, on minimum mandatory sanctions for repeated offenders (peines plancher) which was repelled by the subsequent administration. He would have been caught by that too otherwise.
> Political aspects of the justice system are never acknowledged for obvious reasons but it does not mean they don't exist.
Sure, but also, he did the crime. There can not really be any doubt for the people who followed the trial, and the judges have shown extreme caution, rejecting charges when there was the slightest doubt.
The political opinion or lack thereof of judges is irrelevant.
Speeding is a big word here. It's been 13years already.
But I agree with you. And actually Sarkozy was the most pushing politic to support this, not just when it's about him.
> His case is going to appeal but the court decided to still jail him now "provisionally" (exécution provisoire), which sounds like a political play.
No. That’s how it’s done, and he can thank himself because he introduced the process himself. It’s utterly disgusting to hear him bloviating about criminals in 2007 and now whining because he’s on the receiving end. Shameless.
The law is the law. He’s been convicted enough and he belongs in jail.
Over 85% of people sentenced with 2 years or more await their appeal in jail, at least initially.
I personally agree with you that shouldn’t be the case, but given Sarkozy made his entire political career about being tough on crime and harsher mandatory sentencing, I’d be appalled if he received any sort of special treatment.
He delayed the case enough (almost 13 years) so that he's now more than 70 though and I doubt he stays to long in prison because of his age.
But it's nice to see that he couldn't run away from justice forever and is finally in jail.