More than a year after the accident, Pierre Palmade’s trial will open this Wednesday, November 20 in Melun. The comedian will be tried for involuntary injuries. A charge which is debated and which is considered “scandalous” by the victims’ lawyer.
An expected judgment. This is a case that caused a lot of noise, on February 23, 2023, a road accident caused by Pierre Palmade, then under the influence of drugs, left three people from the same family seriously injured: a 38-year-old man. , her 6-year-old son and her 27-year-old sister-in-law, who had lost the baby she was expecting. A year and a half after the events, the actor’s trial will open this Wednesday, November 20 at the Melun criminal court for the sole charge of “unintentional injuries aggravated by the use of drugs”.
The decision to try the comedian on this charge alone without involuntary manslaughter provoked numerous debates. Questioned on RTL this Sunday, Mourad Battikh, lawyer for the victims, explained that this qualification was “scandalous”: “Legally, for there to be a homicide, there must be a living being who is dead. And there, we had a fetus that was going to be born, alive and viable and which was unable to live because of the accident. There is a direct causal link between the death of this child and the accident. And legally, we draw no consequences from it,” he declared. However, according to consistent case law from the Court of Cassation which has ruled on similar cases of road accidents, a child who is not born alive does not exist as a legal person.
Pierre Palmade faces 14 years in prison
On the day of the accident, after partying for several days, Pierre Palmade had a large quantity of cocaine and 3MMC (a synthetic drug) in his blood. This is one of the points on which Mourad Battikh intends to emphasize since, according to him, it is an aggravating circumstance: “There is an intentional element. When we take a cocktail of drugs for several days, we decide to put ourselves in this state and consume excessively. Ultimately, we decide to take the vehicle and endanger the lives of others,” he added on RTL.
For his part, Pierre Palmade said he was “devastated” by the consequences of the accident for the victims. “I’m obsessed with this, with the baby who died (…). I am dangerous because of drugs, I am a nice guy, I am a good person,” declared the artist and as reported by AFP.
Pierre Palmade is a repeat offender due to a conviction in 2019 for drug use. He thus faces a sentence of fourteen years’ imprisonment and a fine of 200,000 euros.
