He prescribed animal medication to help ease his suffering. A veterinarian, acquitted in May 2022 for “forgery and use of forgery” for having written false prescriptions allowing the suicide of a friend suffering from Charcot disease, was found guilty on appeal Thursday in Angers and exempted from sentence.
Aged 59, the friend suffering from this incurable neurodegenerative disease was found lifeless at his home on May 21, 2019. His autopsy revealed the presence of a deadly molecule from veterinary euthanasia products. A judicial investigation for assassination and attempted assassination had been opened against the veterinarian, accusations finally abandoned during the investigation.
“You have to let me go”
The veterinarian, aged around 60, was eventually prosecuted for providing false prescriptions. He had obtained release in 2022 for these facts of “forgery and use of forgery” but the prosecution appealed.
At the hearing before the criminal court, the practitioner explained that he “at first refused” to respond to his friend’s request, eventually giving in to his distress. He had left a note before killing himself: “You must especially let me go this time.”
“If assisted suicide is not punishable by criminal law, it is the means provided that are. There is legislative hypocrisy. We do not dare to condemn assisted suicide but we prevent it indirectly. It is not up to a clear debate on the end of life and its ethics,” said the defense lawyer, Me Antoine Barret, at the end of the appeal hearing, held at the end of June.