Did the two magistrates in charge of the case make an error to the point of pushing a detainee to commit suicide? It is in any case the intimate conviction of the civil parties, but not that of the criminal court of Lyon having requested Wednesday the release for the two women.
To understand, you have to go back to June 12, 2015, after which Eric Hager was sentenced to two years in prison, including six months suspended, by the Bar-le-Duc criminal court for acts of aggravated willful violence. On that day, no continued detention was ordered on the criminal file, nor pronounced publicly by the court. The defendant’s lawyer therefore informs his client, placed in pre-trial detention, that he will be able to leave during the day.
Hanged in his cell
But the clerk, who had then noted the absence of mention relating to the continued detention, returned to see the president of the court and the deputy prosecutor to question them on this subject. After a brief discussion between them, the substitute added on the hearing sheet the handwritten mention “continued in detention”.
Éric Hager, who would celebrate his 50th birthday three months later, was immediately informed that he would ultimately not be released. He committed suicide a few minutes after a call to his mother telling her that he was going to hang himself. His body was found at 1:50 p.m. in his cell, his shoelaces around his neck.
If it was recognized at the time that the court had forgotten to pronounce the continued detention, the two magistrates were exempted from punishment. Both admitted having added the mention later to correct this initial error, but not with the aim of deliberately “falsifying” the document. Given their youth and lack of experience (one was 27, the other had been in office for three months), they were not sanctioned. The investigations led to a dismissal for “criminal irresponsibility due to error of law” then dismissal for “lack of intentional elements”.
An “error” but “without fraudulent intent”
“Indignant” by these decisions, the family of Éric Hager files a complaint for forgery in public writing by a person holding public authority and arbitrary detention by a person holding public authority. The two women are then sent back to the Lyon Criminal Court, after a change of scenery.
After more than five hours of hearing, where they repeated – sometimes in tears like the substitute – that they had certainly made a “mistake” but “without fraudulent intent”, the prosecutor requested Wednesday “the release”. There was a “succession of oversights and errors”, a “lack of verification” and “disciplinary faults” but “no fraudulent intent” in the acts of the two magistrates, she justifies. The decision was reserved for October 26.