A 39-year-old man was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Friday evening by the Haute-Garonne Assize Court for stabbing his wife to death after an argument in their Toulouse apartment in 2019. The court also ruled sentenced to ten years of socio-judicial follow-up.
He had been appearing since Thursday for having stabbed the 26-year-old young woman who was pregnant 27 times on August 19, 2019. The Advocate General had meanwhile requested 23 years of criminal imprisonment.
During the trial, the accused, who had several stays in a psychiatric hospital, said he “sincerely regretted”, without however acknowledging the facts, claiming to remember nothing.
“You were fragile”
“I don’t understand how it could have happened,” he said, adding: “Today I understand that I am sick and that I need care. “You were fragile, you knew it and you stopped your treatment,” said Clémence Doumenc, lawyer for the civil party, addressing the accused.
The defense lawyers have tried to put forward an alteration of the discernment of the accused and the taking of cocaine that evening. For his part, the Advocate General considered that “there is no doubt that the blows are intentional”. According to him, the accused “was aware of his actions” and “participated in the alteration of his discernment” by consuming narcotics.