The Péchier case continues. The anesthesiologist, already indicted for 24 poisonings of patients and who claims his innocence, begins a long series of hearings in Besançon on Wednesday. In particular, he will have to explain himself on eight other alleged cases which could lead to new indictments.
Free under judicial supervision, he is expected from 9 a.m. for the first three days of hearings in the office of judge Marjolaine Poinsard, in charge of this extraordinary investigation file opened in January 2017, said one of his lawyers. , Me Randall Schwerdorffer.
Frédéric Péchier is suspected by the investigators of a total of 32 patient poisonings, including 13 fatalities: indicted in 2017 for the first seven cases, he had been indicted a second time in May 2019 for 17 other cases, i.e. 24 poisonings, including nine mortals. Among the eight new cases examined on Wednesday, four patients died.
In the light of new medical counter-expertise being submitted to justice, “the first interrogation (on Wednesday) must determine whether there is” or not “indictment for the (eight) new facts” of poisoning of patients, specified the public prosecutor of the city of Doubs, Etienne Manteaux. Six other days of “summary” hearings are then scheduled for March in order to address all the cases, added the magistrate.
Will he speak?
“We have no idea how the interrogations will be approached (…) We have many hearings over many days but we have no schedule” or “no details”, regretted Me Schwerdorffer, according to whom the defense is “put up against the wall”. “For four years”, that is to say since the last indictments in May 2019, “Frédéric Péchier has never been heard. I believe this is unprecedented in judicial history,” he said, referring to a case built on “hypotheses” and not on “certainties”.
The possibility that his client remains silent before the judge, mentioned a few days ago in the Sunday newspaperis an “option” not yet “decided”, explained the council.
Mr. Péchier, who had made a suicide attempt in September 2021 and whose judicial control requires him to live in Vienne, far from his children, is still “dejected”, said Randall Schwerdorffer. He “lived like a relentlessness the last order of the judge which prohibits him from practicing medicine”, while a previous court decision prohibited him only from the practice of anesthesia and resuscitation, he said. he adds. The defense appealed the ban, he said.
Frédéric Péchier, 51, is suspected of having polluted the infusion bags of patients between 2008 and 2017 in two private clinics in Besançon to cause cardiac arrest and then demonstrate his skills as a resuscitator, but also to discredit colleagues with whom he was in conflict.