Jean-Marc Reiser, sentenced Thursday by the Assize Court of Haut-Rhin to life imprisonment with 22 years of security for the murder of Sophie le Tan in 2018, appeals in cassation, told AFP his lawyers.
Jean-Marc Reiser, who had a period of five days to do so, filed this appeal on Monday, said his lawyers Emmanuel Spano and Thomas Steinmetz, confirming information from the Dernières Nouvelles d'Alsace.
The accused still challenges premeditation
Last week, the Assize Court sentenced the 62-year-old on appeal to the same sentence as in the first instance, the heaviest he faced. The objective of this appeal is now to obtain the annulment of this judgment of the Assize Court of Appeal. If he admitted to killing in September 2018 the 20-year-old student of Vietnamese origin "in a fit of fury", then dismembering her with a hacksaw before going to bury the remains of the body in a forest, he has always denied having premeditated his act. But the jurors did not follow the arguments of this man with a heavy judicial past, judged in a state of legal recidivism after a first conviction for rape and sexual assault in 2003, and who faced Colmar at his sixth assize trial.
Despite a long investigation and two assize trials, some grey areas remain, including the exact cause of the student's death. According to his account, Jean-Marc Reiser had tried, at the end of the visit of his apartment, to take the hand of Sophie Le Tan and to kiss her. The latter had then pushed him away by insulting him, provoking in him "a fit of fury" which had resulted in multiple blows. The student then collapsed, fatally hitting the toilet bowl.
The defense hoped that the jurors would only retain "assault and battery resulting in death without intent", which would have involved a symbolically lighter sentence of 30 years' imprisonment.