The Besançon Court of Appeal ordered the release under judicial supervision of the anesthesiologist Frédéric Péchier, indicted for 24 poisonings of patients, including nine fatalities.
On June 12, the Besançon Court of Appeal ruled in favor of the continued release under judicial supervision of the anesthesiologist Frédéric Péchierindicted for 24 cases of aggravated poisoning including nine fatalities, but suspected of being involved in “fifty cases” in total.
“It was what we were asking for, it was what we hoped for, it was in our mind what equity” and “French law and criminal procedure commanded”, rejoiced one of his lawyers Me Le Borgne. According to him, this decision “takes into account the fact that this complex file deserves long investigations, and that no guilt is established, far from it.”
Frédéric Péchier therefore remains free after four hours of debate and one hour of deliberation, as he has been since his indictment in 2017, when the lawyers for the civil party had pleaded in favor of his detention. . Corn the judges’ decision was not about his guilt. The latter considered that his continued release could not hinder the ongoing investigation, disturb public order or even put pressure on his alleged victims. “We had a courageous liberty and detention judge” and “a very legal investigation chamber”, congratulated Me Randall Schwerdorffer, another lawyer for the doctor. “We tell you with force, Dr. Péchier is presumed innocent (…), it is a file as it stands without evidence, there are still many acts of investigation to be carried out”.
A “complex personality, organized in a perverse mode”
The doctor is suspected of having “polluted rehydration solution bags or paracetamol bags with local anesthetics or potassium” of patients aged 4 to 80, while they were operated on between 2008 and 2016. Already indicted in 2017 for 7 cases of patient poisoning, including two fatalities, it is now the subject of a new investigation for 17 new cases, but around fifty reports of “serious adverse events” ( SAEs) that took place in clinics where the anesthetist practiced were done.
“These are unexpected events with regard to the state of health and the pathology of the person and whose consequences are death, the risk of vital prognosis, the probable occurrence of a permanent functional deficit including including a congenital anomaly or malformation”, specifies the High Authority of Health.
A psychocriminological expertise carried out at the request of the examining magistrate and 44 pages long, describes Dr. Péchier as a “complex personality, organized in a perverse mode, with a narcissistic component”. Frédéric Péchier always proclaims his innocence. “Why would I do such a thing? Under the pretext of adrenaline, (…) I would have fun injecting toxic products into people, then going to resuscitate them? It’s completely absurd”, was indignant the doctor in an interview given in March 2017 to The Republican East.
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