The decision will be rendered at 2:00 p.m. in a public hearing at the Court of Cassation in Paris.
The investigating committee may order additional information if it considers that additional investigations must be carried out, reject the request or, on the contrary, transmit it to the Court of Review.
Only the latter, if contacted, can rule on whether or not the life sentence of Dany Leprince, now 67, should be annulled.
The judges can also follow the advocate general who had requested to “wait” for the evolution of a judicial investigation underway in Le Mans, during the hearing on December 12 before the investigating committee, reported the defense of Mr. Leprince.
In this procedure, opened in 2014 after a complaint from the father of the Leprince sons for murder and complicity, his ex-wife, Martine Compain, was placed under the more favorable status of witness assisted by the investigating judge.
But the prosecution is calling for his indictment. The hearing at the investigating chamber of the Angers Court of Appeal has not yet been scheduled, the general prosecutor’s office told AFP.
Waiting for possible developments in this judicial information would be “terribly cruel!”, was alarmed at the end of the hearing Mr. Olivier Morice, who defends Dany Leprince with Mr. Missiva Chermak-Felonneau.
“I trust in justice,” said Mr. Leprince, who has maintained his innocence for more than thirty years.
– “Search for the truth” –
On September 4, 1994, his brother Christian Leprince, his wife and two of their daughters, Audrey, 7 years old, and Sandra, 10 years old, were found massacred with knives in their house in Thorigné-sur-Dué (Sarthe). . Solène, 2 years old, was the only survivor.
Accused by his wife Martine Compain – from whom he has since divorced – and his eldest daughter Célia, Dany Leprince confessed while in police custody to having killed his younger brother, without mentioning the three other victims.
He quickly recanted, claiming that his confession had been extorted by investigators.
-The man who was nicknamed “the butcher of Sarthe” was sentenced to life imprisonment with 22 years of security in 1997 for this quadruple murder by the Assize Court.
After the rejection of his cassation appeal in 1999 – the possibility of appealing a conviction by an assize court has only been possible in France since 2000 – he filed a first request for review in 2006.
But in 2011 the Court of Review refused to hold a new trial.
In spring 2021, his defense filed a new motion for review. This was examined by the investigating committee behind closed doors on December 12.
In a 200-page brief, his lawyers listed around twenty “new facts and elements unknown to the trial court likely to establish his innocence or to give rise to doubt about his guilt”.
Among its elements are notably the role of Martine Compain on the evening of the events, her personality and her “multiple reversals”, as well as the “remarkably evolving” versions of Célia and the analysis of the knives cited in the procedure.
The defense also relies on a letter sent in April 2024 to the investigating committee by Solène, now 32 years old, revealing that she had “serious doubts as to the guilt” of her uncle, “in view of the numerous inconsistencies” of the file. She said she “fervently hopes that a new trial can take place to seek the truth.”
Dany Leprince’s lawyers did not wish to speak before the decision.
After 17 years of detention, their client obtained conditional release in 2012 and has no longer been under judicial supervision since 2021.
Reviews of criminal convictions remain rare in France: only around ten requests have been successful since 1945 in cases of murder or rape.
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