Correcting the Register Before Signature: Reported Speech, Agreement and Legal Vocabulary
The brigade has taken a complaint from a shopkeeper, Mme Z., who says her handbag was snatched near the market at about 18:30. The officer who took the first statement has gone off duty and left a draft paragraph in the register. It reads: 'La plaignante a déclaré que son sac a été volé par deux personnes qu'elle a entendu s'enfuir. Après qu'elle ait signé, nous lui avons remis une copie. Le prévenu a déclaré qu'il a été volé son sac.' The register must be signed in 40 minutes. The stagiaire is asked to correct it before the head of the brigade signs, keeping the declarant's own words where the facts are not yet established, without changing the substance of what Mme Z. said, and without introducing any fact that she did not herself state. Mme Z. speaks French with some difficulty and the stagiaire must not rewrite her account as though the theft were already proven.
1. Correct 'deux personnes qu'elle a entendu s'enfuir' and explain the rule. What would the sentence become if only one person were involved, and what would it become if the objects rather than the persons were the object of the verb?
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Write 'deux personnes qu'elle a entendues s'enfuir'.
Rule: the past participle conjugated with avoir agrees with a direct object placed before it, but only when that object performs the action expressed by the following infinitive. Here qu' = les deux personnes, and those persons are the ones fleeing, so agreement is required: entendues.
With one person: 'la personne qu'elle a entendue s'enfuir' - agreement still applies, and the feminine -e now becomes visible, which is exactly why the error is easy to miss in the plural masculine form used in the draft.
Contrast, to fix the rule: in 'les chansons que j'ai entendu chanter', the songs do not sing - they are sung - so no agreement. The test to apply every time is: does the preceding object do the action of the infinitive, yes or no?
A second correction belongs here: since the statement was taken earlier and the register is written later, 'a déclaré que son sac avait été volé' removes the ambiguity about when the theft occurred. But keep 'avait été volé' attributed to her, not asserted by the officer.
2. Choose between 'après qu'elle a signé' and 'après qu'elle ait signé', and justify the choice in a register that may be read in court.
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Keep 'après qu'elle a signé' - indicative.
Après que is followed by the indicative in careful usage, because it presents a fact that has actually occurred: the signature is real, completed, anterior to the handing over of the copy. The subjunctive after après que is a widespread imitation of avant que (which does take the subjunctive, since the event is not yet realised); it is a common error in administrative writing, not a mark of elegance.
In a procès-verbal the choice is not purely stylistic: the register records an accomplished procedural act - the copy was handed over after signature. The subjunctive, which signals a hypothetical or unrealised event, is out of place in a sentence whose whole function is to establish that a procedural formality was completed.
Note that nous lui avons remis is correct as written: lui is an indirect object and no agreement of the participle is involved. The stagiaire should correct only what is wrong, not rewrite correct forms - a register in which everything has been rewritten is harder to defend as the officer's own record.
3. Rewrite 'Le prévenu a déclaré qu'il a été volé son sac' so that it is grammatical, unambiguous and uses vocabulary appropriate to the stage of the proceedings.
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Proposed rewrite: 'Le mis en cause a déclaré que son sac lui avait été dérobé.'
Three separate defects in the original. First, grammar: il a été volé son sac is neither a correct passive nor a correct possessive construction; the bag is the subject of the passive, and its owner is expressed by lui. Second, ambiguity: as drafted, one cannot tell who was robbed and who did the robbing - precisely the point that a defendant's statement must settle. Third, vocabulary and stage: prévenu designates a person already referred to the court; at this stage, before any decision on prosecution, the person is a mis en cause or la personne entendue. Using prévenu in the register prejudges the outcome and hands a defence lawyer a free argument.
Keep the attribution visible: a déclaré que marks this as his account, not the brigade's finding. If the statement is contested, quote him directly between guillemets rather than summarising - direct quotation cannot be accused of having distorted his words.