Posted
FranceThe killer who wanted to know what it feels like to take life has his sentence lightened
For the murder of a hitchhiker, in 2018 in Lozère, Mathieu D. had received life imprisonment at first instance. His appeal trial ended Thursday with 30 years in prison.
On Wednesday, before the Assizes of Lozère in Mende (above), the Advocate General had demanded against the killer the confirmation of his life prison sentence.
Wikipedia/László Szeder/CC BY-SA 4.0
A man sentenced to life in January for the murder of a hitchhiker, whom he had killed in order to “experience the feeling of taking life”, saw his sentence reduced to 30 years in prison on Thursday at the outcome of his appeal. This sentence was accompanied by a 20-year security period and a treatment order.
On Wednesday, before the Assizes of Lozère, in Mende, the Advocate General had demanded against Mathieu D., 27 years old this Thursday, the confirmation of his life prison sentence. He had asked to combine this life with a security period of 18 years, against 22 years decided by the Assize Court of Nîmes on January 18.
first tears
After a five-hour deliberation, the Assize Court of Mende therefore again found Mathieu D. guilty of premeditated murder, however reducing his sentence. Since the opening of his second trial on Monday, the accused had repeated that he had only decided at the last minute, even though he had had the fantasy of committing murder for years. “The verdict is better than at first instance, it’s rare. It is to the credit” of Mathieu D., confided his lawyer, Jérôme Arnal. “It offers him a prospect of coming back to life, of a future,” he added.
While he had always been extremely cold since his arrest four years ago, in front of the investigators as at his first trial, the accused had shed his first tears on Wednesday when referring to his victim. The fruit, according to him, of the therapy started in prison, which allows him to begin to feel emotions. “I know I still have time to continue this therapy. Claire, I took 60 years from her,” he said.
He claims to have “felt nothing” when he murdered his victim
On June 21, 2018, this hitherto uneventful young man, then 23 years old, went to the police station in his hometown of Montélimar, in the south of France, to confess to a homicide committed two days earlier in Sommières, in Gard. After dining with his future victim, Claire Reynier, a 39-year-old woman he had hitchhiked, he killed her with 17 very violent blows from a hunting dagger purchased three weeks earlier. During the trial, he repeated that he wanted to “experience the feeling of taking life” and see if he would experience pleasure or disgust from it, he tried to explain, saying that he did not finally felt nothing.
(AFP)