Will there be a third trial in the Patricia Bouchon case? It is in any case the hope of the defense of Laurent Dejean, sentenced on July 9 to 20 years of criminal imprisonment on appeal for the murder of this mother of a family in February 2011. In a
column published on Sunday, his lawyer, indicated that he had lodged an appeal in cassation.
In a text entitled “The trial of bad reputation or the triumph of the presumption of guilt”, Master Karim Chebbani evokes “a judicial error” where “it was not a question of working for the manifestation of the truth but for the consecration of a truth, chosen, constructed ”.
Patricia Bouchon, secretary in a Toulouse law firm, had disappeared while she was jogging in the early morning of February 14, 2011 in Bouloc, north of Toulouse. Her belongings, as well as traces of blood and hair, were found in a dead end the next day. His body was discovered 45 days later, hidden in a buzzard.
The defining Clio
Four years after the murder, Laurent Dejean, a plasterer from the town, was arrested and indicted because of a bundle of “serious and consistent” clues. The composite portrait of a man driving a Clio crossed by a witness near the dead end on the day of the murder had been decisive. “It is necessary here to understand or to try to admit that the essence of this trial is based on this automobile question singularly considered decisive by the investigators”, deplores the lawyer adding that “this vehicle, of which no link is made with the scene of crime, could it not simply be a vehicle of passage, not the vector of a crime? “.
In 2019, Laurent Dejean was sentenced at first instance to 20 years in prison, despite the request for release from the Advocate General “for lack of evidence”. On appeal, the representative of the prosecution had requested 20 years in prison against him.