His desire to "die in bed" in Pietracorbara, the village perched on the heights of Bastia where his companion lives, is far from being granted. The request for the release of Joseph-Thomas "Tommy" Recco was rejected by the sentencing chamber of the Bastia Court of Appeal, said the public prosecutor's office near the court and one of his two lawyers, Me Jean-Sébastien de Casalta.
It was not the first time that the octogenarian, born on May 10, 1934 and detained at the penitentiary center of Borgo (Haute-Corse), challenged the judgment of first instance. Already in 2012, the medical reasons invoked to leave the prison had not convinced the medical expert or the magistrates and the request for release had been refused.
"I will no doubt appeal to the Court of Cassation," said Me de Casalta, adding that Tommy Recco was "weakened, present with many marked ailments and has served more than 50 years in detention".
"On the merits, I had no illusions because he is still in the denial of the facts," reacted his other lawyer, Me Alain Lhote, adding that in matters of suspension of sentence, "the jurisprudence provides that medical experts must consider that the state of health is incompatible with detention ”.
The lawyers will study the possibility of seizing the European court of the humans right "because certain European countries do not know this type of detention of more than 50 years", added Me Lhote.
At the hearing on June 2, the Advocate General requested confirmation of the decision of the first instance. The civil parties also opposed this request for release.
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Joseph-Thomas Recco, ex-combat swimmer in the French army, had been sentenced to life imprisonment in June 1983 by the Var Assize Court in Draguignan for two triple murders which he has always denied: that of three cashiers from a supermarket in Béziers (Hérault) on December 22, 1979, and that of a young girl, her father and one of their neighbors, clerk in Carqueiranne (Var), on January 18, 1980.
In 1962, he had already been sentenced to death for the murder of his godfather but, pardoned by General De Gaulle, had his sentence commuted to life imprisonment. He had been released in 1977.