It's also a way for someone to make their own re-election (or the continued control of their party) easier by "putting pressure on the judiciary branch" as you said to find their opponent guilty.
Take the individual parties of today out of it. You don't want the party in power in the government to have the ability to decide who is allowed to run for office. If you actually want to live in a democracy and not just autocracy with your favored party in power, you want the people to decide who runs with as little government input as possible.
A judge saying someone is not allowed to run for office is objectively, by definition, anti-democratic.
> We're seeing this exact process happen in real time in the US.
Last I checked Rosie O'Donnell is only one stupid enough to imply that the latest presidential election was not completely above board.
I know that, I'm just saying that if you can "put pressure on the judiciary" (which is a ridiculous statement in most western countries but especially France) to find someone not guilty, you can certainly do it to find them guilty.
The information the jury hears in the US in criminal cases, especially high profile ones, is extremely tightly controlled. They're not in the room when lawyers are making evidentiary arguments to include or exclude evidence. I've served on a couple juries and the most high-stakes one carried potentially decades of jail time for the defendant. We were shuffled in and out of that room dozens of times each day for lawyers to make arguments about what we could or could not hear. Several of our questions during deliberation were answered with a section of the transcript and nothing more.
Take the individual parties of today out of it. You don't want the party in power in the government to have the ability to decide who is allowed to run for office. If you actually want to live in a democracy and not just autocracy with your favored party in power, you want the people to decide who runs with as little government input as possible.
A judge saying someone is not allowed to run for office is objectively, by definition, anti-democratic.
> We're seeing this exact process happen in real time in the US.
Last I checked Rosie O'Donnell is only one stupid enough to imply that the latest presidential election was not completely above board.