Adrien wasn’t ready for the walk that morning. A failure in the alarm clock which, as required by the internal regulations of Draguignan’s pre-trial detention, deprives him of his morning outing. “It pissed him off, says Jacques, a prison guard assigned to this wing of the prison, who heads the criminal court in Draguignan. Upon being informed of the refusal to walk, he knocked on the door. Loud. With a colleague we went to see him to tell him that he bothered everyone. He was yo-yoing (1). They were confiscated. He started yelling at us…”
A quarter of an hour passes. Then Adrien presses the alarm light in his cell. Jacques comes back to see him. This time, the squat fifties are itt alone with the young prisoner. “Right away he told me we had screwed up in his cell. He pushes me, I push him away. He falls. Then he picked up a plastic chair and started hitting me with it. I could have defended myself, but I touched, I would have been the aggressor. I took the blows and walked out backwards. He spat at me. He told me he was going to kill…”
“I’m innocent, boss”
“I have never said that, answers Adrien from the stage. The supervisor is back. He wanted to punch me and broke his wrist. I just called to take a walk. I’m innocent, boss.”
If, in fact, Jacques had broken his hand, no trace of a blow was found on the prisoner’s face. “And yet, if my client’s wounds were the result of a blow, Adrien P. would have had some marks” relieves MAnd Laurie Calmet civil party. “But even the plastic chair bears no trace of this altercation, defensive note Me Fabrice François. It’s still amazing.”
After this episode of violence, Adrien waited for the intervention team with a frying pan in hand and after pouring some oil on the ground. “I had been beaten up by a guard, so I knew when it got to ten…”
“It’s one’s version against the other’s version, admits prosecutor Guy Bouchet. But reading the file, that of Jacques R. seems to me to be the truth.” Faced with requests for 10 months’ imprisonment, the defense requests his release, “lack of objective elements”. “There are no witnesses, no exploitation of video surveillance…” The court will not need it to formulate a conviction and to follow the prosecutor’s requests to the letter.
1. yoyo: thread that allows goods or messages to be passed from one cell to another, through the window, from one floor to another.
