The verdict fell this Thursday, June 27, 2024 for Méderic Meunier. Nearly 5 years after his acquittal in Carcassonne, the man was found guilty by the Pyrénées-Orientales Assize Court of having killed Eric Démier in October 2011 in Leucate. He was sentenced to 12 years of criminal imprisonment.
Méderic Meunier’s mother prays in the front row of the assize court and holds her husband’s hands tightly, tight on his shoulder. Twelve years they have been waiting and fearing the moment that will play out there. Frozen for their only son who enters the room.
Left free for 11 years, acquitted almost 5 years ago by the Aude Assize Court, of course this 52-year-old man could have not shown up at the conclusion of his second trial. Perhaps feeling the wind (of the ball) turning as the hours pass. “I risk 30 years anyway, I could have run away far”, he confided the day before during a recess of the hearing. “But I will come for the verdict. I cannot do otherwise because I have been waiting too long for an answer, the end of this nightmare. To resume my life. And then, they acquitted me once, why not a second”. So, Méderic Meunier is there, again, this Thursday. He hugs each of his parents, tries to put on a brave face so as not to add to it, then turns around, fear in his eyes, to face the jurors who are returning from deliberating. It is now impossible to escape his destiny…
“Did Médéric Meunier intentionally kill Eric Démier between October 24 and 28, 2011 in Leucate? “Yes!”. At noon sharp, in less than a quarter of a second, the sentence whistles like a cleaver. It took 2.5 hours for the court (as much as to pronounce the acquittal almost 5 years ago in Aude) to declare him guilty of murder and deprive him of his liberty, in accordance with the requisitions of the attorney general, during 12 years of criminal imprisonment. Méderic Meunier is literally stunned. Without reaction, he takes off his bracelets and entrusts them to his father, who slips them on his wrist and falls into the arms of his mother, collapsed in tears. “It’s going to be okay, it’s going to be okay,” he whispers to them before disappearing, between two police officers, to return to the prison. Terrible end to the story…
An appeal to the Supreme Court immediately filed
“We didn’t expect that,” confides Méderic Meunier’s mother. “We are completely stunned and I can’t find the words because I think we haven’t really understood yet what was happening to us. There are no witnesses in this case, no one who saw anything , no confession, nothing was found in the searches No, he didn’t do that. He’s been living in Leucate for nine years, in the village where the crime took place where everyone. shows sympathy and without us having anything to reproach him for and 12 years later, they come to take him away from us This Thursday, at noon, our life stopped.
On the defense bench, Mes Philippe Capsié and Maxime Lachi remain stunned. “It’s a total misunderstanding”admits the first. “The debates have not always been absolutely calm, with incidents, with a forensic doctor who, one day says white, another says black. And with a file which has not evolved at all since the judgment of acquittal We can only explain this deliberation by a desire to maintain the idea that a good assize court is a court which convicts. the hypotheses gave rise to investigations. She notes that sums of money disappeared from the victim’s house while Méderic Meunier is not even being prosecuted for theft. She relies on “the surprising comments he made. during the investigation” and on “the fluctuating, evolving and untruthful nature of the accused’s statements, including at the hearing.” And then she took the DNA trace on the victim’s bed “without Méderic Meunier does not provide satisfactory explanations for his presence. “As if it was up to him to prove his innocence.” And Me Capsified to announce: “It’s obvious, we will file an appeal in Cassation during the day.”
