The question is on everyone’s lips at the Nantes Assize Court on Wednesday. Hubert Caouissin will he spend the rest of his days in prison? His lawyers implored this Wednesday the jurors to have the “courage” not to sentence to life imprisonment this man with “atrocious paranoia”, judged for having killed the Troadec family with hind kicks on the night of the 16th to the 17th. February 2017 in Orvault before dismembering their bodies.
“Hubert Caouissin is in a cage, he is in a mental cage, in a cage of obsession and delirium. He did not choose to kill his victims. He was not free, he was caught in this excruciating paranoia. You must take this into account, ”launched his lawyer, Maître Thierry Fillion, before the Loire-Atlantique Assize Court.
“I beg your pardon…” said Hubert Caouissin
After two weeks of debates, the accused, a former worker at the Brest arsenal, must be determined on his fate this Wednesday at the end of the day. “I very much regret what happened at Orvault and what I did afterwards,” said Hubert Caouissin before the court withdrew to deliberate. “I apologize to everyone who has been affected. I ask pardon from Sébastien, Charlotte, Brigitte and Pascal, ”he added.
Tuesday, the public prosecutor requested life imprisonment, with a twenty-two-year security period, against the fifty-year-old man with a bald head, tried for the murder of Brigitte and Pascal Troadec (49) and their children. Charlotte (18 years old) and Sébastien (21 years old) with doe kicks, at their home in Orvault, near Nantes, on the night of February 16 to 17, 2017. In his farm in Finistère, Hubert Caouissin had then skinned painstakingly stabbing the bodies with a kitchen knife for three days, throwing muscles and viscera into brambles, in the hope that they would be eaten by wild animals, and incinerating the bones, skin and fat in his kettle.
A “chronic delirium of the paranoid type”
In his pleadings, Me Fillion insisted at length on the mental pathology from which his client suffers, a “chronic delirium of the paranoid type”, unanimously recognized by expert psychiatrists and psychologists. The day before, the public prosecutor had asked the jurors not to “take into account” this pathology when giving their verdict.
Taking into account the various expert reports submitted during the investigation, Me Fillion counted “114 pages of expertise”. “A hundred quartorze pages of canards, Mr. Advocate General? Is that what you’re saying? Are these stories, salads? », Launched the lawyer. According to him, it is “the madness which pushed” the accused to make the trip to Orvault “this evening of February 2017”. Convinced that his brother-in-law had stolen an imaginary treasure of gold bars, the accused recounted having gone to his in-laws to obtain “information” on this supposed theft. Assaulted as soon as he entered the house, he would then have killed to defend himself. “At all times of the facts for which Mr. Caouissin is prosecuted, mental affection lurks,” said Thierry Fillion. “I do not see how one can not conclude that the discernment has been impaired. Or we have to change the law! “
“It is not dangerous that man”, according to a defense lawyer
If the court recognized that Hubert Caouissin’s discernment was impaired during the commission of the crimes, it could then grant him a mitigation of sentence, which would be lowered to 30 years’ imprisonment.
Still relying on expert reports, the defense also refuted the supposed “dangerousness” of Hubert Caouissin, advanced by the public prosecutor to justify his requisitions. “He’s not a psychopath, he’s not a pervert,” said Me Patrick Larvor. “To request such a heavy sentence by coming to disguise the file in a shameless way, it is not honest. This man is not dangerous. “Me Fillion thus asked the jurors” to show courage “during the deliberation. “Judicial courage in this case is not to follow the requisitions,” he said.
A little earlier, the lawyers of Lydie Troadec, 52, tried for modification of a crime scene and concealment of corpses, asked the court to pronounce a suspended sentence against their client. The maximum penalty, three years in prison, had been requested the day before. “She never wished for her brother’s death. She never wished for the death of her family, ”pleaded Me Alexis Crestin. “The guilt, she is aware of it, it is not sending her back to prison that will change anything. “