A French anesthesiologist was sentenced to life in jail on Thursday for intentionally poisoning 30 patients, 12 of whom died.Frédéric Péchier, who worked as an anesthesiologist at two clinics in Besançon, a city in eastern France, committed the crimes between 2008 and 2017, the court said in a statement after a 15-week trial. Mr. Péchier has denied the charges since investigations began eight years ago. His lawyer said on Thursday that his client would lodge an appeal.
Mr. Péchier was permanently barred from practicing medicine and will not be eligible for parole for at least 22 years, the court statement said. Life sentences are relatively rare in France, underscoring the severity with which the court viewed the case.
His youngest victim was a 4-year-old boy, Tedy, who fell into a two-day coma after the anesthesiologist inserted a toxic substance into the child’s intravenous drip during a routine surgical procedure, according to his family’s lawyer, Archibald Celeyron.
“This is a huge relief for my clients and for all the victims who have been waiting for this moment for eight years,” he said in an email.
Though Tedy ultimately survived, Mr. Celeyron said, the child went into “cardiac arrest for 25 minutes, received nine injections of adrenaline and was shocked five times with an electric defibrillator.”
Stéphane Giuranna, a lawyer for several victims in the case, said the verdict was a “relief” and a “liberation” for the victims.
“I am never satisfied when a man is sentenced to life imprisonment,” Mr. Giuranna told reporters inside the courthouse. “But when you look at the case file — 12 deaths, 18 survivors, the greatest criminal of the century, one of the greatest criminals in French legal history — it could not be otherwise,” he added.
The lawyers of several victims criticized Mr. Péchier’s refusal to provide an explanation for his actions, but expressed hope that an appeal trial would lead to more information.
Mr. Péchier told the French radio station RTL in September that he was “apprehensive” of the trial. “But I do have strong arguments,” he said. “So I’m not going into it reluctantly.”
He said that while he “understood the distress” of the victims and their families, he was “not responsible” for it. Since the first accusations against him emerged, Mr. Péchier told RTL, he lost his job, was divorced, stopped seeing his children and went back to live with his parents — where, according to RTL, he tried to die by suicide.
“These are times of torment,” Mr. Péchier said. “I lost everything.”
Mr. Péchier’s position did not change throughout the trial, his lawyer, Randall Schwerdorffer, said in a radio interview on Monday, before the judges retired to decide the verdict.
“He can only repeat what he has been saying from the beginning: ‘It wasn’t me, it was undoubtedly someone else,’” Mr. Schwerdorffer said.
Mr. Péchier’s incarceration began as soon as the verdict was issued, according to the court statement.
Ségolène Le Stradic is a reporter and researcher covering France.
The post French Doctor Sentenced to Life for Fatally Poisoning 12 People appeared first on New York Times.
