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 is judging 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 through the streets of Grenoble when he was attacked with a knife by a 56-year-old man. It turns out that the attacker, Jean-Pierre Guillaud, who fatally stabs the young victim, is diagnosed with schizophrenia and treated in hospital psychiatrist of Saint-Egreve.
How this demented patientdid he manage to find himself 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 among Luc Meunier’s parents. the schizophrenicwho was found criminally irresponsible, had taken advantage of an unsupervised outing to slip away and commit this murder.
The former doctor faces 5 years in prison
Should the negligence of the psychiatric hospital and the psychiatrist who was then in charge of the dangerous patient be punished by justice? This is the first time that French justice has had to rule on the criminal liability of a hospital 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 sued for “lack of supervision” of its patient.
This case had had a great media and political impact. Nicolas Sarkozy then President of the Republic had pleaded for the creation of a national file listing the patients hospitalized in office to reinforce their monitoring.
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