This Wednesday, there will probably be an audience of journalists to hear Pierre Palmade. Photographers, too, who we imagine already posted around the room. But not that of one of those theaters that the actor has been playing for thirty years. Almost two years after the dramatic road accident that he caused while driving under the influence of various drugs, Pierre Palmade appears before the criminal court of Melun, in Seine-et-Marne. Initially indicted for “involuntary manslaughter” after the in utero death of a baby, he was finally tried for “aggravated involuntary injuries”. Already convicted of use and acquisition of narcotics, Pierre Palmade faces fourteen years in prison.
This Friday, February 10, 2023, it was a little after 7 p.m. when the comedian, driving his Peugeot 3008, deviated from his trajectory, drifting into the left lane. A few moments later, his vehicle collided head-on with a Twingo which was traveling on this departmental road in the opposite direction. The shock is incredibly violent.
The driver, then aged 38, was very seriously injured. He spent more than five months in the hospital, undergoing a series of surgeries. The passenger – her sister-in-law – is six months pregnant. The baby will not resist the violence of the collision. In the back, the driver’s little boy, aged 6, was also very seriously injured. He suffers from “very serious head and facial trauma”, notes the expert report. “I ruined the life of a family, I go to sleep and I wake up with that,” Pierre Palmade bluntly admits to the investigating judge during his first interrogation.
Cocaine and 3-MMC
The actor, whose vital prognosis was also briefly threatened, tested positive for cocaine. He also took 3-MMC, a powerful drug one of whose effects is to stimulate the libido. Pierre Palmade admits that he has just spent 48 hours in his country house – a few kilometers from the scene of the accident – with two friends to indulge in chemsex, sex under drugs. His two partners, who were in the car, fled into the forest a few minutes after the accident. Arrested a few days later, they were ultimately not implicated in this case.
Placed for several weeks in pre-trial detention in hospital, the actor does not seek to clear his name. “I am dangerous because of drugs, I am a nice guy, I am a good person,” he told the magistrate. He swears that he doesn’t usually drive under the influence of drugs, having lost his father at age 8 in a car accident. “I am completely devastated to have endangered the lives of the family I hit, I am obsessed with that, the baby who died,” assures Pierre Palmade. Contacted, his lawyer, Me Céline Lasek, wished to reserve her answers for the court.
Manslaughter and death in utero
If the scenario of the drama was quickly established, this unborn child was at the heart of the investigations. Because behind human tragedies there are often questions of law. The death of a fetus, however dramatic it may be, cannot be considered a homicide. Even if it was viable at the time of death, even if the term was close. The whole question was therefore whether this little girl was alive when she came out of her mother’s womb – even in an already critical condition – or died in utero.
On the evening of the tragedy, an emergency cesarean section was performed on the six-month pregnant victim. The fetus weighed just over a kilo. In the eyes of experts, there is no doubt that the infant was viable and that his death was the direct consequence of the accident. However, the child “is in a state of death at birth and does not present any clinical or paraclinical care for independent life during the 32 minutes that his resuscitation lasts”, notes the expert report. Reason why Pierre Palmade is not tried for his homicide, to the great dismay of the civil parties.
