“My good heart will ruin me. » In retrospect, this sentence is chilling… Too good, too welcoming, Jean-Yves Di Pasquale actually lost his life, struck by the man he hosted in his home. Arnaud Dufour, 40, was found guilty of murder on Thursday November 14 by the Dordogne Assize Court.
This verdict was not written in advance. Indeed, the accused denied it upon his arrest, one month after the facts, in June 2021. And, throughout the three days of the hearing, he remained silent. “I’m a stranger to all this,” were the only words he uttered. No emphasis, no piercing cry to proclaim his innocence… “He is accused of having brutally killed a man and he says nothing,” lamented Me Vincent Maris, lawyer for the victim’s family.
“Uncertainties”
It was Me Dominique Pohu-Panier who had the heavy responsibility of pleading for acquittal. His arguments were understandable. Indeed, a bundle of clues leads to his client, but none would a priori definitively incriminate him. “There are a number of uncertainties. And the certainties are not enough to say with certainty that Mr. Dufour committed this crime. »
The lawyer recalled that the victim’s DNA was not found on the hammer (supposedly the murder weapon) where Mr. Dufour’s DNA appears. “If he wiped the blood, why didn’t he wipe the handle? “, she asks.
The defense finally tried to undermine the silence: “Should we condemn him because he kept silent? This is not proof of guilt. »
“Should we condemn him because he kept silent? »
But these elements were not enough. After four hours of deliberation, the three magistrates and the six jurors favored guilt. The public prosecutor’s argument had borne fruit. “It is not because you do not have all the answers that that excludes all the objective elements of this case,” the attorney general told the court. Particularly the hammer: why would Arnaud Dufour have thrown it in the trash, in the street, if not to get rid of the murder weapon? And his DNA was found in the palm of the victim’s hand.
Furthermore, the suspect left Périgueux at a time concomitant with the death of Mr. Di Pasquale. And his motive seemed obvious: after having been welcomed for weeks by his benefactor, the homeless man recognized as delusional paranoid would have been afraid of being put back on the street.
Impassive
The verdict finally came: twenty years of criminal imprisonment. This is less than the maximum sentence (thirty years) but exactly the quantum required. In his box, the forty-year-old did not blink, still displaying the same impassive look. As if he was a stranger to his fate. His lawyer declined to comment on the decision.
Me Vincent Maris concluded his pleading by regretting the absence of any expression from the condemned: “There could have been a last ounce of humanity in this man, but no! » The victim’s sister also thundered at the hearing: “That he doesn’t want to talk makes me very angry. One word would be enough, one word. Let him say what happened! »
Arnaud Dufour has ten days to appeal.
