The Court of Cassation on Wednesday rejected the appeal of Cécile Bourgeon, sentenced to twenty years in prison for having killed her daughter Fiona.
This decision puts a definitive end to the legal proceedings, and Cécile Bourgeon is definitively condemned.
"After having examined both the admissibility of the appeal and the procedural documents, the Court of Cassation finds that there is, in this case, no means of such a nature as to allow the admission of the appeal", justifies the highest court French judiciary in its decision.
"It's a page that turns" and a decision "which puts an end to nearly ten years of suffering for the civil parties of course, but also for Cécile Bourgeon", reacted his lawyer, Me Renaud Portejoie.
After having spent “more than seven years in detention”, this one “is now planning on a request for adjustment of sentence which should be mentioned in the coming months”, he added.
Baby Fiona's body was never found
Cécile Bourgeon and her companion Berkane Makhlouf, a drug-addicted couple, had reported the disappearance of Fiona on May 12, 2013, pretending to a kidnapping in a park in Clermont-Ferrand.
After four months of investigation, they confessed that the girl was dead and buried near a lake.
The body was never found.
Since then, Cécile Bourgeon and Berkane Makhlouf have rejected responsibility for the death.
Tried at first instance in 2016, the first had been acquitted of the fatal blows and sentenced to five years in prison for having lied, the second had been sentenced to twenty years in prison.
On appeal, the two defendants were sentenced to twenty years in prison in 2018, but the Court of Cassation had canceled this sentence.
During a trial at the end of 2020, Cécile Bourgeon was then sentenced to twenty years in prison for the fatal blows on Fiona, her companion to eighteen years in prison.