A decision which comes after several years of procedural battle. The Bordeaux Court of Appeal ordered the transfer of the murderer of two caregivers in Pau in 2004, declared not criminally responsible due to his schizophrenia and since placed in the Unit for Difficult Patients (UMD), to a psychiatric hospital.
This decision of September 15, revealed Tuesday by the newspaper Release and which the AFP was able to consult, orders “the lifting of the measure of placement in a unit for difficult patients” of Romain Dupuy, hospitalized without his consent for more than eighteen years in a structure of this type in Cadillac (Gironde) . He will now be cared for in a general psychiatric service “under the regime of full hospitalization”, specifies the court.
Not tried for the two murders
Declared criminally irresponsible in 2007 due to a chronic psychotic disorder of a schizophrenic nature, Romain Dupuy had not been tried for the stabbing murders of a caregiver and a nurse, whom he had decapitated , at the Pau psychiatric hospital center on the night of December 17 to 18, 2004.
According to the latest doctors’ examinations carried out in 2022, mentioned in the order of the court of appeal, Romain Dupuy’s mental state is “stable”. The guardianship measure to which he was subject was recently lifted, the magistrates further noted.
The general prosecutor’s office is studying an appeal in cassation
The patient had been the subject of four favorable reports from a medical monitoring committee since 2018. But despite several requests for transfer to a traditional psychiatric hospital, he remained at the UMD of Cadillac, the prefecture of Gironde s opposing in 2022 a favorable decision by the judge of freedoms and detention.
On April 4, the Bordeaux administrative court refused to rule on the case, referring to the conflict court the task of determining who, the judicial judge or the administrative judge, had jurisdiction in the matter. On July 3, the court ruled in favor of the first, paving the way for the decision rendered by the court of appeal.
The public prosecutor’s office is still studying the possibility of filing a cassation appeal, the public prosecutor told AFP on Tuesday.