Ajaccio courthouse.

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OLIVIER LABAN-MATTEI / AFP

Antoine Pietri, a 30-year-old shepherd, was acquitted on Saturday evening by the jurors of the Assises of Corse-du-Sud of the assassination of Patrick Julien, an association president and local elected official killed on November 4, 2017 in Soccia.

"He is happy, after three years of legal battle, he was heard", slipped to the media Me Paul Sollacaro in court.

Patrick Julien, 52, was found dead behind the wheel of his backhoe loader, whose engine was still running, hit by buckshot in the buttock and shoulder and by a fatal shot from a large caliber bullet to the head.

The lawyer general, Françoise Mariaux, had requested Saturday morning twenty-five years of criminal imprisonment against the shepherd who has always proclaimed his innocence.

"Antoine Pietri killed Patrick Julien that day and he killed him with premeditation, that means he went there for that", argued the general counsel, assuring that he had shot "three times On his victim who was from behind.

In this file, "you have no confessions", but there are "certainties", she continued, listing the ballistic and DNA elements: "On the scene of the facts, only his DNA was found" .

A motive and no alibi

She also noted that Antoine Pietri "(vait) lied" on the t-shirt he wore on the day of the assassination and which was found to be covered with particles of gunshot residue, "proof that he was drawn on the day of the incident ”.

Residues "not datable", argued the defense.

In the eyes of the prosecution, the motive was "the feeling of injustice" of the young man facing the questioning of the allocation of land for his farm by a municipal association chaired by the victim.

"No one was with him on the afternoon of the events between 2:30 p.m. and 4:30 p.m., the time slot during which the murder was committed," she insisted.

For five hours, the three defense lawyers pleaded for acquittal by shouting about the work of investigators who "messed up everything", an "inexperienced" investigating judge, the expert "who comes to the aid of the gendarmes", the "Fiasco" of the reconstruction, of the witnesses and tracks "left aside" and "undrinkable requisitions".

We require "twenty-five years on a bogus investigation", indignant Me Ana-Maria Sollacaro.

Arrested "on a rumor"

Assuring that Antoine Pietri was arrested "on a rumor", Me Paul Sollacaro, himself, estimated that "everything in this case, was likely to misalign the investigation has been swept away".

"We leave you with the roughly, the approximate, poorly done work and maybe even voluntarily because the gendarmes wanted his head," he told the jurors.

“It doesn't smell good, it doesn't smell of the little Corsican shepherd, it smells of the big bad wolf”.

Antoine Pietri said he was "tired of the situation".

"I just want to live, find my horses," he slipped before the jurors withdrew.

Less than an hour after the verdict, Antoine Pietri, smile on his lips and guitar on his back, was released from prison.

The public prosecutor said to appeal this decision on Monday.

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  • Reckoning

  • Assize Court

  • Justice

  • Trial

  • Assassination