Did Romain Bouchez have to spend his life "surrounded by blue shirts or white blouses", as his lawyer, Me Maxime Gallier, had questioned in his plea?
Should the 27-year-old young man, who murdered Nicky Regnault in Béthisy-Saint-Pierre in 2016, return to prison or be treated in a psychiatric hospital?
This Friday, the jurors of the Assize Court of Oise ruled by condemning him to 20 years of criminal imprisonment for the assassination of the employee of Parc Astérix, then aged 37.
A conviction which comes to settle a long battle of experts during which, between abolition, alteration and full criminal responsibility, no one really knew how to decide.
According to the jurors, yes, "a mental disorder" had altered his discernment when, this Friday in October, he presented himself in Nicky's room to slit his throat.
Yes, Romain gave in to this "evil" voice which told him to kill in the hope of "resuscitating" his mother.
Without however its discernment being completely abolished when it comes time to act.
"A decision that shows the complicated link that justice has to mental illness"
"No doubt the jurors felt that he could have resisted it, at least partially", advances Me Maxime Gallier, who considers the verdict "improbable" and has already decided to appeal.
"Madness is scary so we condemn severely," laments the lawyer of Romain Bouchez.
It is a decision that shows the complicated connection between justice and mental illness.
"
The verdict of the Assize Court is the epilogue of the slow drift of a young man, on the edge, on the border between reality and his "mad" world.
"A drift that is more imaginative than mental pathology," said one of the experts.
"He is at the border", "in contact with a certain reality", argued two other psychiatrists.
"There are criteria of lucidity", estimated earlier the Advocate General, Jean-Baptiste Bladier, before requesting 18 years of imprisonment.
"He had the impression of not being understood"
While remaining in touch with this reality, Romain has despite everything, little by little, locked himself in his madness.
“There was unease on all levels of his existence,” summarizes an expert: the successive loss of parents, in 2012 and 2014, this homosexuality that he does not assume, worn out by the jeers he suffers at the school ... "A series of dramas", breathes at the helm this young man with jet-black hair, small glasses and thin lips.
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Is Romain then this “monster”, as he himself says, asking “forgiveness” from Nicky's mother?
“Tonight, he had the impression of not being understood, regrets his lawyer.
He himself was waiting for answers.
Nicky's family won't have had more.
