René Edmond Floriot was a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 lawyer

Lawyer

A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...

.

Life

"Son of a Paris municipal clerk, Floriot studied law at the Sorbonne

Sorbonne

The Sorbonne is an edifice of the Latin Quarter, in Paris, France, which has been the historical house of the former University of Paris...

, started practicing before his 21st birthday. In the 1930s, he prospered by winning divorces for the wealthy in a week, though the cumbersome process usually takes two to three years in France. After the war, he unabashedly defended war criminals and collaborators."

Floriot drove "a research staff of six lawyers, known as "l'usine Floriot" (the Floriot factory). Gifted with prodigious memory, he can simplify the most complex case for the dullest of jurors. While other French lawyers deliver elegantly vague speeches to nodding, berobed judges, Floriot deals in facts, not forensic flourishes. In a profession heavily weighted toward lawyers with social standing, Floriot has succeeded entirely on drive and shrewdness."

Floriot became "one of the best and most expensive of Parisian criminal lawyers".

Later he participated in some film productions.

Otto Abetz

Otto Abetz

Dr. Heinrich Otto Abetz was the German ambassador to Vichy France during World War II.-Early years:Abetz was born in Schwetzingen on May 26, 1903. He was the son of an estate manager, who died when Otto was only 13...

Floriot "saved Otto Abetz, the hated German ambassador to Paris, from execution; Abetz got 20 years, was later freed, and died in a car accident."

Marcel Petiot

Marcel Petiot

Marcel André Henri Félix Petiot was a French doctor and serial killer. He was convicted of multiple murders after the discovery of the remains of 26 people in his home in Paris during World War II...

"Floriot also defended Dr. Marcel Petiot

Marcel Petiot

Marcel André Henri Félix Petiot was a French doctor and serial killer. He was convicted of multiple murders after the discovery of the remains of 26 people in his home in Paris during World War II...

 who, between 1942 and 1944, lured 63 Jewish refugees to his Paris house with promises of help; and was accused of robbing and killing at least 27 of them. Floriot proved that three or more of the alleged victims were German agents and that some of them were still alive. But though Floriot won professional respect for his tenacious defense, Petiot went to the guillotine

Guillotine

The guillotine is a device used for carrying out :executions by decapitation. It consists of a tall upright frame from which an angled blade is suspended. This blade is raised with a rope and then allowed to drop, severing the head from the body...

. Floriot went too—in France, the lawyer traditionally takes the last walk with his client."

Pierre Jaccoud

"In his most spectacular murder trial (1960), Floriot defended Swiss Lawyer-Politician Pierre Jaccoud, onetime dean of the Geneva bar. Police had the murder weapon; witnesses insisted that Jaccoud had shot and stabbed the father of a man who had stolen his mistress. But Floriot harried the witnesses into damaging concessions about the murder weapon, wrung lurid testimony from the mistress. He airily dismissed Jaccoud's lack of alibi

Alibi

Alibi is a 1929 American crime film directed by Roland West. The screenplay was written by West and C. Gardner Sullivan, who adapted the 1927 Broadway stage play, Nightstick, written by Elaine Sterne Carrington, J.C...

: "Only criminals have alibis. Intelligent people never remember how they spend their evenings." Jaccoud got seven years."

Gustave Mentre

In 1961, Floriot "braved President de Gaulle's wrath in winning a suspended sentence for General Gustave Mentre, an accused conspirator in the Algiers coup."

Ben Barka case

Floriot defended two detectives implicated in the kidnap-murder of Algerian Rebel Leader Ben Barka; one was acquitted, the other got six years.

Moise Tshombe

Moise Tshombe

Moïse Kapenda Tshombe was a Congolese politician.- Biography :He was the son of a successful Congolese businessman and was born in Musumba, Congo. He received his education from an American missionary school and later trained as an accountant...

Aerial hijackers delivered Moise Tshombe to an Algerian jail in July 1967. His wife turned to "one of the few men who might have saved her husband from extradition to the Congo—and almost certain death. Parisian Lawyer René Edmond Floriot, 64, faced appalling odds: the Congolese had already convicted Tshombe of not only treason but also murder and robbery. With eloquence, Floriot contended that the Congolese had actually amnestied Tshombe last fall." But last week" of July 1967 he lost.

Though Tshombe could not be extradited for purely political reasons, ruled the Algerian Supreme Court, "Algerian justice does not shield murder and robbery." If President Houari Boumediene

Houari Boumediene

Houari Boumedienne served as Algeria's Chairman of the Revolutionary Council from 19 June 1965 until 12 December 1976, and from then on as the fourth President of Algeria to his death on 27 December 1978.- Background :Mohamed Ben Brahim Boukharouba was born near Héliopolis in the province of...

ratifies the Court's decision Tshombe must go home—presumably to his doom. For the best-known avocat in the French-speaking world, it was a rare, bitter defeat. In 20,000 cases, Floriot has lost only two clients to the guillotine and about ten to the firing squad."