French justice maintains an "innocent" man is still "guilty"

Sometimes it must be hard for those outside of France to understand the workings of this country's judicial system.

But there again for those living here, it's surely not always particularly easy.

Last year two separate cases - those of Loïc Sécher and Marc Machin - showed how innocent men had spent time behind bars for crimes that had either never taken place (Sécher) or for which they had been wrongly sentenced (Machin).

And on Monday, once again the French system showed how reluctant it is to admit possible miscarriages of justice.

The latest case concerns Antonio Madeira - now 55 - and his daughter, Virginie.

In 2001 Madeira was sentenced to 12 years in prison after being found guilty of raping his 14-year-old daughter. She testified that he had sexually abused her from the age of six.

But in 2006 Virginie, then aged 21, not only retracted her accusations, but published a book "J'ai menti" ("I lied") in which she admitted that she had made the whole story up.

"I decided to write this book to show that my father is innocent and this is the only solution I've found," she said in interviews at the time.

To attract the attention of her classmates, Virginie said she had "pretended to have been the victim of sexual abuse," and it was a story she had repeated to police and the courts before her father was found guilty and sentenced.

After serving six years behind bars Madeira was released - conditionally - and his lawyers sought to have the case retried based on new evidence.

But that first request and the most recent one, to the commission of revision of the penal judgments were both turned down.

This time around it was because as far as the commission was concerned, the retractions of the daughter and her battle over several years to prove the innocence of her father, including the publication of a book were "not credible when compared to the accusations".

It also insisted that Madeira had at one point admitted the crimes of which he had been accused and that the testimony from experts that showed gynecological tests proved Virginie was a virgin were "inconclusive".

The overturning of a sentence through a retrial has only taken place six times in France since 1945. The most recent case was that of Patrick Dils, who in 1989 was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of two children.

A retrial was ordered and in 2002 he was found not guilty.

For Madeira's lawyer, Michaël Doulikian, his client's case is a clear example of how slowly the French judicial system works, and how unwilling it is to admit an error has been made.

"Instead of recognizing that there had been a miscarriage of justice and ordering a retrial, the commission has compounded the initial mistake," he said.

"Madeira will be found not guilty because his innocence and the virginity of his daughter have both been established," he added, promising that there would be a third request for a retrial submitted soon.