SIf we are to believe the guilty declarations made to the police officers on his hospital bed, Pierre Palmade should assume his responsibilities on Wednesday until the bar of the court of Melun (Seine-et-Marne). In broad daylight with cameras and flashes waiting for him at the turn after long periods of less seclusion, an entry into the legal scene orchestrated ten short kilometers from the scene of this tragedy which earned him fourteen years in prison. When, on the ordinary path to a shopping center, the comedian smashed his car and his reputation one winter evening against another driver and his two passengers who were seriously injured in the accident. Saved from death, almost two years later all are still suffering in their flesh or their souls, notably the youngest of the victims, a boy now aged 8 years old. Less affected, his mother Mila, on the other hand, is mourning the child with whom she was six months pregnant.
“Unbridled reveler”
First indicted for this involuntary homicide which the prosecutor insisted on, Pierre Palmade nevertheless appeared before his judges exempted from this charge by case law. Thus a stillborn baby could not be considered anything other than a fetus, a reclassification considered “scandalous” by the victims’ lawyer. Under the influence of two aggravating circumstances, the artist nevertheless faces great risk at the end of a trial which will also be that of drug addiction while driving. Positive for narcotics and a repeat offender after being convicted in a previous case (1), the 56-year-old artist is described like an unpinned grenade when he boards his vehicle in the modestly named company of “two party buddies “. According to these elements provided by the investigating judge in the referral order, he will recognize the non-stop and at-home consumption of a synthetic drug during the 72 hours of debauchery preceding the accident. 3-MMC injected every hour or so intravenously in order to increase one's libido and also increase one's sexual pleasure tenfold, that's the famous “Chemsex” and its ravages since revealed to the face of French society.
“Drugs must be banned from my life”
Swearing to have no memory of the collision when he woke up in an intensive care unit, Pierre Palmade admitted, however, to being aware of the seriousness of his actions, then confessing “shame” and his regrets to the judge. 'instruction. “I am completely devastated that I put this family in danger, obsessing over this and the baby who died. Drugs need to be banned from my life. »
Descent into hell
Far from being an accident, the collateral damage of his plural and deadly addictions illustrates the interminable descent into hell of a man perched since his twenties at the summit of artificial paradises, the age at which the brilliant HEC prep student had left Bordeaux to make people laugh in the capital. As talented on stage as tortured behind the scenes, the irony of Pierre Palmade's legal fate also resonates with the early death of his own father in the summer of 1976. While he was returning from giving birth in the Landes countryside, this young obstetrician had not survived a traffic accident. What remains, according to the psychiatric expertise that “Sud Ouest” was able to consult, is a “somewhat fragile personality and a certain immaturity still linking him to childhood”. Defending himself before the investigators of having the habit of driving in a daze, Palmade will also recall – supporting invoices – taking the taxi as often as possible in memory of this trauma suffered when he was only eight years.
Despite numerous and various detoxification treatments interrupted prematurely, Pierre Palmade nevertheless did not learn all the lessons, digging his grave as much as his financial situation over the course of the abuses. Where we learn that sister also living in Bordeaux will even end up offering him a measure of guardianship. In vain. “He alternates between two faces,” insists the expert psychiatrist. “That of the comedian, hard worker on an empty stomach, and interested in mature women; and that of an unbridled reveler, living his homosexuality in a displayed and all-powerful way. Gradually, it was the second who gained the upper hand, in an ever-increasing search for hedonism, at the risk of the rest of his life. »And that of others, as he will be reminded this Wednesday in court.
The ghost of Bordeaux
Now obliged, according to some accounts, to earn his living by writing under a pseudonym, rejected by most of his comrades in the artistic world, it is in Bordeaux that the fallen comedian has discreetly continued his medical-judicial journey since the spring of 2023. Without going through all completely unnoticed, let's say that her tall, somewhat numb silhouette has become familiar over the seasons. A few provisions from the butcher and the local supermarket, sometimes on Wednesday a late stop at the Barrière de Bègles market, and that's about it. So on the surface is the life that Pierre Palmade leads in the shadow of these suburbs, forced by the judges as much as by the doctors to keep a low profile. Forgotten in particular this trip to the nightclub which set social networks alight a few months after the accident. Gone are the days when laughing motorists filmed him on the sly, or rather insulted him. If not benevolence, at the very least relative anonymity.
From pariah to ghost, if Palmade is no longer in hiding, he is very discreet outside of outings linked to his judicial control and his three weekly treatment sessions at the university hospital. “To my knowledge, he no longer consumes drugs or alcohol,” says his friend François Rollin, one of the rare actors who has not turned his back on him. “A small victory in an ocean of disasters,” he continues, referring to “his desire to ask for forgiveness, to be forgiven, and to make reparations. »
When a country with 67 million prosecutors dreamed of seeing him convicted before being judged, there is no doubt that part of the public nevertheless expects his trial to be more of a lesson in morality than in law. Neither more nor less than what it deserves, the magistrates will know how to rebalance the media balance by holding their debates around a case as is unfortunately judged almost every day before our courts.
(1) In 2019, for acquisition and consumption of cocaine.
