She had killed her violent partner: ten years in prison required

Ten years in prison were required Thursday in Rouen (Seine-Maritime) for "voluntary violence resulting in death without intention of giving it", against a 42-year-old woman who shot her violent partner in 2016.

“Yes, he was a violent man”, said the lawyer general Corinne Gérard before the Seine-Maritime Assize Court, “but you cannot respond to violence with violence”.

On October 16, 2016, Alexandra Richard shoots her 36-year-old husband with a hunting rifle at their home in Montreuil-en-Caux, when the latter, alcoholic, has just risen from his chair, threatening her with him " smash the face ”.

"It's not what I wanted"

This mother of three children, including one with the victim, was being prosecuted for the murder of her spouse, but the Advocate General requested a reclassification as "willful violence resulting in death without intention of giving it".

For murder, the accused faces life imprisonment;

for willful violence resulting in death without intention of giving it, twenty years.

On the other hand for the magistrate, it is not an accident, contrary to what the defense pleads.

At the bar, the accused with a clean criminal record admitted to having loaded the weapon.

But "that he died, that's not what I wanted," says Alexandra Richard, who was in a relationship for about two years with this man, sentenced in 1999 for having shot a rival in love.

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“It was a deterrent weapon.

I wanted […] to run away with my children, ”recalls the accused.

According to her account, her husband had started drinking whiskey in the morning before insulting her and being violent with her again.

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"You have suffered physical and sexual violence," says his lawyer Nathalie Tomasini, who was the counsel of Jacqueline Sauvage, sentenced to have killed her husband before being pardoned at the end of 2016 by François Hollande.

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“Even in prison, I slept better than next to him.

Nobody hit me, ”underlines Alexandra Richard, who has been in pre-trial detention.

For the lawyer of the parents of the deceased, Rose-Marie Capitaine, on the other hand "there were excesses at (him) but from there to present him as a torturer, let's avoid these excesses".

And it is "not possible to restrain manslaughter or fatal blows."

"If it's to scare, no need to load the gun," she argues.

The verdict was to be delivered overnight.