Can doctors be held criminally responsible for acts committed by their patients? This is one of the thorny questions that the Grenoble Criminal Court will have to decide, which judges a psychiatric hospital and one of its former doctors for the murder committed by a patient in 2008.
Back to the facts. On November 12, 2008, Luc Meunier, a 26-year-old student, was walking in the streets of Grenoble when he was attacked with a knife by a 56-year-old man. It turns out that the assailant, Jean-Pierre Guillaud, who fatally stabs the young victim, is diagnosed with schizophrenia and treated in hospital psychiatric clinic in Saint-Egreve.
How this demented patientdid he manage to end up in the street without being spotted by the nursing staff? This is the heart of the problem, and what has aroused incomprehension and anger for 8 years from the parents of Luc Meunier. the schizophrenic, who was found criminally irresponsible, had taken advantage of an unsupervised exit to slip away and commit this murder.
The former doctor faces 5 years in prison
Should the negligence of the psychiatric hospital and of the psychiatrist who was then in charge of the dangerous patient be sanctioned by justice? This is the first time that French justice has to rule on the criminal liability of a hospital practicing psychiatrist for manslaughter. He is accused of “a lack of appreciation of his dangerousness”. He faces five years in prison. The Saint-Egrève hospital is being prosecuted for “a lack of supervision” of its patient.
This affair had received great media and political repercussions. Nicolas Sarkozy then President of the Republic had pleaded for the creation of a national file listing the patients hospitalized automatically to strengthen their surveillance.
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