In a prosecution document, the Melun public prosecutor’s office requested the referral for trial of Pierre Palmade for “injuries and involuntary manslaughter”, one year after the serious accident he caused in Seine-et-Marne.
The Pierre Palmade affair, which shook public opinion a little over a year ago, following a tragic road accident in Seine-et-Marne, has undoubtedly just experienced a legal turning point . After an investigation lasting more than 8 months, concluded on November 10, the Melun public prosecutor’s office officially requested the referral of the comedian to the criminal court to answer charges of “homicide” and “involuntary injuries”, according to the requisitions revealed by AFP this Monday March 4, 2024.
Pierre Palmade, at the wheel of his Peugeot 5008 and under the influence of drugs, caused a head-on collision on February 10, 2023 with a Renault Mégane, where there was a family of Kurdish origin: a driver, accompanied by his son and a ‘a pregnant woman who is going to lose her unborn baby. All have left indelible physical and emotional after-effects of the tragedy. Among the victims, the six-year-old child was seriously injured and the driver placed in an artificial coma, with serious consequences for his health.
But the most controversial aspect of this case lies in the legal qualification of the death of the unborn child. Can we consider as “manslaughter” the death of a viable child but not yet born at the time of the tragedy? On this point, the 24-page document, drawn up by the Melun public prosecutor’s office at the end of the investigation and revealed in the press on March 4, takes a clear position: according to the requisitions, the medical expertise, carried out during the The investigation concluded that the child had died in utero, therefore before giving birth. But she had also established a direct causal link between the accident and the death of the baby and the charge of manslaughter must therefore be retained.
“It should be remembered that the medical expertise concluded that this child was indisputably viable when the accident occurred on the grounds that she was born after 27 weeks of amenorrhea for 5 days and weighed 900 g,” indicates the document, extracts of which were revealed in Le Parisien. “In addition, the medical expertise concludes that there is a direct and certain causal link between the public road accident suffered by [the child’s mother] and the death of her child.”
The jurisprudence of the plenary assembly of the Court of Cassation, however, excludes the charge of involuntary manslaughter in such a situation. It could therefore be called into question during the trial and with it the legal status of the unborn child. The prosecution itself seems to request this debate in its indictment, following the request of the victims’ lawyer, Me Mourad Battikh. “The observations filed by the council [the mother’s lawyer] and relating to the granting of legal personality to the viable child, a status allowing him to be protected by criminal law, deserve a debate before the court of judgment”, writes the Melun public prosecutor’s office which adds: “In general, the prosecution of the charge of involuntary homicide against the fetus itself has been at the heart of profound divergences in jurisprudence, as in doctrine”.
The victims’ lawyer based himself on these discrepancies and highlighted a legal paradox: currently, an attacker can be tried for attempting to kill a child in the womb if the child survives, but not if the child dies in utero.
Pierre Palmade, who admitted his responsibility in this tragic accident, also expressed in his last interrogations a “terrifying apprehension” about the future and the trial that awaits him. But in the document which should send him before the judges before the end of the year, the prosecution is scathing: “The misconduct committed by Pierre Palmade is the certain and direct cause of the damage suffered” by the victims.
