The anesthetist Frédéric Péchier, suspected of having poisoned 24 patients in Besançon, has "many personality traits (which) legitimately feed a suspicion," according to a psychocriminological expertise revealed Sunday and challenged by his lawyers.
A personality "complex, organized in a perverse fashion"
L'Est Républicain published Sunday excerpts of a 44-page report, written in late April by two experts at the request of an examining magistrate, who presents Dr. Péchier as having "a complex personality, organized on a perverse fashion, with a narcissistic component ". "Many personality traits and life events legitimately fuel a suspicion about his possible guilt," according to an excerpt published by the newspaper on its website.
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Dr. Péchier was indicted Thursday for 17 new cases of poisoning patients, seven of whom have not survived, and left free under judicial supervision. He had already been indicted in 2017 for seven suspected poisonings, including two deaths. The 47-year-old doctor, who remains presumed innocent, is forbidden from exercising and going to Besançon or the neighboring commune where he lives.
The defense "dismayed" by the disclosure of this expertise
"The only vocation of this expertise is to harm Dr. Péchier and the next hearing before the Chamber of Education," reacted with AFP one of his lawyers, Mr. Randall Schwerdorffer, saying to himself "appalled" by the publication in the press of the judicial document. The investigating chamber must examine in the coming weeks the prosecutor's appeal against the placement under judicial supervision of the anesthesiologist. The prosecutor, Etienne Manteaux, had requested his imprisonment after his indictment. "This expertise is questionable, both in its quality and in its content" because the experts relied on elements of the file without ever meeting Frédéric Péchier, said Mr. Schwerdorffer. "I do not know what psychocriminology is, it's not a recognized science, it's not an authoritative science in the judiciary," he said.
"Tensions" between the anesthetist and his colleagues
The prosecution suspects that the anesthetist "polluted pockets of rehydration fluid or bags of paracetamol with local anesthetics or potassium" patients aged 4 to 80, while they were operated between 2008 and 2016 He reportedly acted "in a context of acute conflict with his fellow anesthetists or surgeons," according to the prosecutor. For the report's experts, quoted by the daily, "Mr. Péchier attaches great importance to others" and "tensions" between the anesthetist and his colleagues have "probably promoted the acting out". "There are other expertise on the record that say it is perfectly normal," retorted on BFMTV, Me Jean-Yves Le Borgne, another advice from Frédéric Péchier.