Acquitted four years ago in Aude, Méderic Meunier, retried since Monday before the Pyrénées-Orientales Assize Court for having killed a “friend” in October 2011 in Leucate, tried until the end, this Wednesday June 26, 2024 , to convince the jurors of his innocence. Faced with the requisitions of the attorney general who called for his sentence to 12 years of criminal imprisonment. That is to say a sentence lower than that which had been requested by the prosecution in Carcassonne, of 15 to 20 years of imprisonment. The accused will be determined on his fate this Thursday.
“I find it hard to explain, but does that necessarily make me a murderer? In one sentence Médéric Meunier, 52, poses the entire dilemma of this criminal affair in which he has been entangled for 12 years. Forced today to place his freedom, put on hold for so long, in the hands of justice. To wipe your forehead, to restrain yourself “this offbeat humor” and these “slide” who have “maybe worth being there“. And trying to prove again that he did not kill Eric Démier at the end of October 2011 in Leucate.
“He was my friend”, the accused defends himself. The two men had met again thirty years ago when Médéric Meunier came on vacation with his family on the Aude coast in the summer. In 2011, they were even neighbors, a few dozen meters apart and continued to maintain a friendly relationship of variable geometry. Eric Démier, drug addict, described as “ moody and aggressive”, managed his heroin trafficking from his bed, in the apartment located above its bar Le Littoral. Nicknamed “psycho parano”, “most often stoned”, he never opened without a glance through the peephole to receive his acquaintances and clients, including Méderic Meunier.
“We saw each other regularly. I was shopping for him. Since he never left the house, I didn’t mind going downstairs to get a pizza and take it to him.” he says. “Eric, he was good especially when there were two of us, when there were people around, he acted interesting and he needed a Turk’s face. CIt wasn’t always easy with him.It depended on his mood. But I don’t consider that I was his lackey, nor his whipping boy.”
“In Leucate, no one would have had the balls to kill Eric”
Méderic Meunier maintains. The last time he saw Eric alive was on Sunday, October 23, 2011 in the afternoon. “I went to his house. He must have been waiting for someone because he got up and went to take a shower. I got on the bed playing console while waiting and he told me to leave. We put the sheets back on. I’ve touched his bed a thousand times, I’m even surprised that my DNA isn’t found everywhere in the house. But at At that time, I didn’t think I would need an alibi.” History will say the opposite.
“On Tuesday or Wednesday, I tried to see him, there was noise but no one answered. It happened to me all the time. But breaking down his door, I would never have risked it,” continues the fifty-year-old. The following Friday, two other friends of Eric Démier ventured there and discovered him, lying in a pool of blood. A crime scene, at first glance. “I didn’t hide. I was at home. I saw the gendarmes knocking on the doors. I I said to myself: “They are going to come see me eventually…”“On November 9, 2011, investigators were on his doorstep. “I told them, ‘Well, I thought you weren’t going to come…’
Placed in police custody for the first time a few months later, he was finally released. “No proof has been provided of Mr. Meunier’s guilt.” the report says. A brief reprieve before the noose tightens on him. “Yes, it’s true. One day I said, “I said I gave Eric two machete blows when I left.” But it was humor. And then Eric didn’t die like that anyway. HAS Leucate, ceveryone had their own personal conviction. For me, it wasn’t someone from the village who did that. No one would have had the balls to kill Eric. But I hope we’ll find out one day…” The hearing is suspended until Thursday morning. Méderic Meunier leaves the room. For his last night of freedom, perhaps…
“This affair is a fantasy. And a rumour”
“Uit is trace DNA of the accused found on the fitted sheet from the victims“. “Uit is very strange coincidence between the murder and a sudden financial ease” of the accused. These are the elements of the prosecution to support the guilt of Méderic Meunier in this crime. Because, argues the Advocate General, “he had a drug debt” et “resentment in a very close and rotten friendship”. And the three girls like Eric Démier’s ex-partner, through the voice of Me Romain Fontes, are just as convinced.
An argument “way too short” for the defense lawyers Mes Philippe Capsié and Maxime Lachi, fighting to dismantle the hypotheses one by one, trying to obtain a new acquittal for their client and “put an end to his nightmare. “This is a case that is part of collective fantasy, legend. And rumor. A case where everyone must have an opinion in this small village where we don’t have much to talk about. There were around twenty leads to the Thai mafia and 14 suspects. There, we’re not really sure but that’s how it is, we needed one, and it fell on him. So, we build mobiles”they assert. “Are we sure he had a debt? And how much? He had one; he said so, but he paid it off by buying a games console from Eric Démier a few weeks before the facts. We have the documents. We are told of financial comfort because he put money back into his account to avoid being overdrawn and because he paid two out of five rent arrears. . As for his DNA, why is it only in this place? We would have liked to have looked for traces on the handle of the front door which would have been locked. “No date of the crime. No weapons. No auditory or visual witnesses.
And to question the court: “If justice really believed that it had a murderer in front of it, would we have waited all this time to judge him, and to retry him, leaving him to wander the streets? Does judging someone 12 years after the fact constitute an unreasonable delay? And what legitimacy does the Perpignan Assize Court have to judge what others have already judged?”
