At trial of fire on rue Erlanger, twenty-five years’ imprisonment for accused

Essia Boularès was “simply animated by anger and resentment towards her neighbor,” said the courtyard when she lit the fire which caused the death of ten people on February 5, 2019, in Paris.

by Henri Seckel

“I was out of control, I was not myself, I no longer knew what I was doing,” said Essia Boularès. The Paris Assize Court judged, on the contrary, that the accused was fully aware of her actions and their consequences when she set fire, on the night of February 4 to 5, 2019, to a small heaps of paper, fabric and wood in front of the door of his neighbor’s neighbor, causing the death of ten people in a fire that had finally ravaged the whole building of 17 bis, rue Erlanger, in the 16 ^{e arrondissement of Paris.}

At the end of three weeks of hearing and six hours of deliberation, Essia Boularès, 44, was found guilty, Thursday, February 23, of “voluntary destruction by fire which led to death”, and sentenced to twenty- Five years in prison -twenty -seven years had been required the day before by the Advocate General -, a penalty accompanied by a period of two -thirds security and an obligation of care for fifteen years. “It is an extremely heavy sentence that leaves no hope, a sentence of social elimination,” deplored Sébastien Schapira and Léa Hufnagel, lawyers of the accused, who remained impassive in her box at the Verdict statement.

Essia Boularès, according to the courtyard, was “simply animated by anger and resentment towards his neighbor” who came to tell him, brutally typing on her door, that she listened to her music too loud. His undeniable psychiatric disorders, put forward by his defense, do not apologize or explain his gesture. “The facts alleged against him must be attached to her impulsiveness, to her intolerance to frustration and toxical effect that she has consumed, but in no way a pathology.” The idea of ​​a possible attenuation of His responsibility given his fragility has been swept away.

Psychiatrists experts responsible for looking into the case of this woman with a “messy” personality, having multiplied stays in psychiatric hospital and suffering from alcohol and cannabis addiction, had come to the conclusion that her Discernment was not “abolished” at the time of the facts, which would have prevented the holding of a trial, but “altered”, which opened the door to a decrease in sentence, finally dismissed by the court.

“half mad, double penalty”

This alteration of discernment turned against the accused. Far from being perceived as an attenuating circumstance, it ended up constituting a reason to condemn it heavily. “In the eyes of the courtyard, M ^{me boularès has the disadvantages of normality and abnormality, the dangerousness of both, estimates M e Schapira. We consider that she acted as someone normal, but she scares like some crazy someone. This alteration of discernment worries for the future, but we do not take it for the moment of The fact commission. “In his pleading, the lawyer had thus summed up this paradox:” half mad, double penalty. “}