Rose Filippazzo, 50, was sentenced to twelve years’ imprisonment on Friday by the Lyon Assize Court, found guilty of the murder of her husband. The jury took into account the impairment of his discernment, diagnosed by two psychiatric experts, and therefore decided to retain the mitigation of his criminal responsibility.
The court also pronounced three years of socio-judicial follow-up, a ban on carrying a weapon for a period of fifteen years, as well as an additional penalty of deprivation of civil rights for a period of ten years. The Advocate General had a few hours earlier requested sixteen years in prison, rejecting the arguments of the defense which invoked the influence and the violence of her husband on the accused.
“She kills her husband in cold blood”
For the magistrate, no mitigating circumstances could be retained for the fifty-year-old who killed Michel Zirafa, her husband, with a bullet in the head while he was sleeping, on September 16, 2018 in Thurins (Rhône). “No haste in his gesture, no panic. She kills her husband in cold blood”, declared Thierry Luchetta, for whom the estimated distance of 10 centimeters between the revolver and the head of the sleeping victim demonstrated “the will to kill”.
The magistrate totally rejected the thesis of an act of defense of a woman under the influence, which would have had murder as the only escape from years of humiliation. “She could ask for a divorce. France is not Iran or Afghanistan,” insisted the Advocate General.
“She was not her husband’s puppet,” he added, going so far as to doubt the domestic violence described by the accused, and confirmed by her daughters at the hearing on Thursday. “The habitual nature of the violence does not seem to me to be established”, said Mr. Luchetta, for whom the accused “demonizes her husband so that his crime is minimized”.
According to the Advocate General, the financial motive could explain the crime. “At the time of the shot, she thought she was the beneficiary” of a life insurance policy of 200,000 euros taken out by her husband the previous year, he said.
“Getting out of the vice”
Friday morning, the psychiatric experts had however diagnosed a process of influence, which had been able to isolate Rose Filippazzo. “She remains a prisoner of the pathological relationship,” said Professor Liliane Daligand in particular. “She develops a reference frame of dependence and characterized submission”, added Doctor Xavier Renaud, in his expertise read at the hearing.
A specialist in domestic violence and a legal expert, Liliane Daligand indicated that the murderous act could have resulted from “wear and tear”, an “accumulation” of suffering inflicted by her husband. “The passage to the murderous act made it possible to get out of the vice”.
According to her, the accused “reproduced what she has always known” because the influence and violence were already present in her childhood. Hence “a mental disorder” which, according to her, leads to an alteration of her discernment. “This is the trial of all these powerless women, dependent on their violent husbands,” argued Janine Bunaggiunta.
The defense lawyer said she was “angry” with the attorney general for not taking into account “the word of a battered woman”. “I am appalled to see that mentalities are not changing,” insisted the former lawyer for Jacqueline Sauvage, convicted of killing her violent husband before receiving a presidential pardon in 2016. “Condemning a woman who was beaten all her life to criminal imprisonment, it is insane”, added the lawyer, who had asked the jury “the greatest indulgence”.