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As in the case of the mémoires judiciaires studied by Sarah Maza, peddlers distributed copies of criminal judgments in the streets, while court clerk also read them aloud during the spectacle of execution; on occasion, they could even be found posted on the walls of public places. There were thus many avenues of consumption for the arrêts criminels. Using the example of a particularly scandalous legal case involving Antoine-François Derues, the author would like to describe the evolution – analogous to the one S. Maza observes in the mémoires judiciaires – of the narrative structure of these criminal court judgements, which were printed by order of the Parliament of Paris. Much more than boilerplate forms – despite their legalistic style and certain fixed formal phrases – the arrêts evolved into a complex series of texts whose rhetoric was designed to excite public opinion against the opposing attorneys. In response to the vogue of the mémoires judiciaires, the authors of these texts sought to reverse growing criticism towards the judicial system by justifying, with the aid of an “authentic” account of the facts at hand, the decision of the judges.