A 42-year-old woman was sentenced to ten years in prison in Rouen for “willful violence resulting in death without intention of giving it”, after fatally shooting her violent partner in 2016.
10 years required
“Yes he was a violent man”, had estimated in the evening the lawyer general Corinne Gérard before the Assize Court of Seine-Maritime, “but you cannot respond to violence with violence”. Ten years in prison had been required.
On October 16, 2016, Alexandra Richard shot her 36-year-old husband with a hunting rifle at their home in Montreuil-en-Caux, when the latter, alcoholic, had just risen from his chair, threatening her with him “kick the ass”. This mother of three children, one of whom she had had with the victim, was being prosecuted for the murder of her spouse, but the general counsel requested a reclassification as “willful violence resulting in death without intention of giving it”. On the other hand for the magistrate, it is not an accident, contrary to what the defense pleads.
At the bar, the accused with a clean criminal record admitted to having loaded the weapon. But “that he died, that’s not what I wanted,” assured Alexandra Richard, who had been in a relationship for about two years with this man, sentenced in 1999 for having shot a rival in love. “It was a weapon of deterrence. I wanted (…) to run away with my children,” added the accused, who said “regret everything that happened”.
He considered her to be his whore or his housekeeper
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According to her account, her husband had started drinking whiskey in the morning before insulting her and being violent with her again. “You have suffered physical and sexual violence”, added his lawyer Nathalie Tomasini, who was the counsel of Jacqueline Sauvage, condemned for having killed her husband before being pardoned at the end of 2016 by François Hollande. “Alexandra Richard is a beautiful person, it was the ideal prey. There is domination and control, the control will allow physical, sexual, economic violence. She had to be at his service, whether it is sexually or for household chores. He considered her as his whore or his governess, “pleaded Me Tomasini.
Even in prison, I slept better than next to him. Nobody hit me
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“Even in prison, I slept better than next to him. No one beat me,” explained Alexandra Richard, who was in pre-trial detention.
For the lawyer of the parents of the deceased, Rose-Marie Capitaine, on the other hand “there were excesses at (him) but from there to present him as a torturer, let’s avoid these excesses”. And it is “not possible to hold back the manslaughter or the fatal blows”. “If it’s to scare you, no need to load the gun,” she argued.
Alexandra Richard, who could face up to 20 years in prison, has ten days to appeal.
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