Toulouse: Court of Assizes, a 73-year-old woman sentenced to 7 years in prison for the death of her husband
In June 2020, at L’Union near Toulouse, Daniel, 72, died killed by his wife who had then attempted suicide. This woman has just been sentenced by the Assize Court of Haute-Garonne to 7 years in prison. The Advocate General had requested 12 years of imprisonment.
In the box of the Assize Court of Haute-Garonne, her hands often resting on her thighs, Martine seems elsewhere. Under her white hair, this 73-year-old woman explains herself for having committed a murder. Does she explain herself? She fights with her memories, rather what’s left of them. Not much.
“This woman suffers from Kretschmer’s disease. Significant suffering which intersects, combines hypersensitivity, melancholy, depression”, warns her lawyer Me Roman Scaboro. The psychiatric experts have also retained an alteration of his discernment but at the end of the investigation, the justice returned this pensioner who has been sick for very long years before the criminal court.
On June 3, 2020 at L’Union, at the end of the first confinement, she shot her husband, who suffered from serious heart and kidney problems. She fired twice, with a .22 long rifle, before turning the gun on herself. “She put the gun to her chest and opened fire,” said her defender. The bullet passed through the lung and snuck through, passing within a centimeter of the heart and vital arteries. After shooting Daniel, her husband with whom she shared her life, she tried to call the emergency services, getting the numbers wrong. Then she called her son.
At the bar of the Assize Court, this man speaks of double punishment: “My father is dead, my mother has been in prison for two years”. When he arrived in the family pavilion this Wednesday, June 3, 2020 in the middle of the afternoon, “I understood that my mother is not in a normal state”.
Investigations by the gendarmes of the Unon brigade, with the support of investigators from the research brigade of the Saint-Michel company, showed, in particular, that this woman has not taken her medication for several days. This break in treatment could explain his acting out.
The defense: “This woman wanted above all to end her life”
According to the criminal code, for the murder of her spouse, this woman encourages life imprisonment. With the taking into account of the alteration retained by the psychiatrists, the maximum sentence fell to 30 years. Advocate General Marie Regnier-Pellat asked the jurors, mostly men, for a sentence of 12 years in prison. “In view of the seriousness of the act and the social transgression it represents”, underlines the representative of the prosecution.
The defense did not contest Martine’s guilt. “But it can only be examined with regard to the personality of this woman, who has been sick for years, believes Me Romain Scaboro. But also of her husband, also weakened by his health, and victim of the paranoia of his wife who wanted , above all, to commit suicide, to end one’s life”.
After deliberation, the court sentenced Martine to 7 years of imprisonment. A sentence pronounced by President Guillaume Roussel who headed the court and who, by referring this last file, puts an end to more than 35 years in the service of justice.