This affair made the rounds in the media and provoked numerous reactions. One year ago now, on Wednesday February 22, 2023, Agnès Lassalle, a Spanish teacher who taught at the Saint-Thomas-d’Aquin private college-high school in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, was stabbed to death by one of his students. The teenager in question, who was armed with a knife, had hit the victim in the chest. The 53-year-old Spanish teacher died from her injuries. The incriminated student was then indicted for murder, as part of the investigation opened by the police for assassination. A year after the events, Le Figaro revealed, Thursday February 22, 2024, that the main suspect was the subject of numerous expert assessments throughout this first year of investigation. The Bayonne public prosecutor’s office thus revealed that “several expert psychiatrists” examined the teenager, who is currently being held in pre-trial detention in a juvenile correctional facility. While the investigations are currently focusing on the psychiatric state of the suspect, his lawyer, Me Sagardoytho, filed a motion to obtain the abolition, or alteration, of his client’s discernment in this matter.
Will the first assessments carried out on the suspect be canceled?
The student’s lawyer thus relied on article 122-1 of the Penal Code, which stipulates thata person “affected, at the time of the facts, of a psychological or neuropsychic disorder having abolished his discernment or the control of his actions” is not “criminally responsible” of these. If justice were to respond favorably to Mr. Sagardoytho’s request, then the expertise carried out on his client to date would all be canceled. As a reminder, the teenager’s lawyer had questioned the conclusions of his client’s first psychiatric assessment, which took place during his police custody, just a few days after the death of the teacher. He considered that this examination was “summary” And “really not serious”. Me Sagardoytho also affirmed that his client “did not recognize being the conscious and lucid author of this drama“. For his part, the Bayonne public prosecutor considered that the young suspect was “accessible to criminal liability, subject to the expert opinions which must be ordered and a possible alteration of his discernment”.