The hunter who killed Morgan Keane received a two-year suspended prison sentence and a life ban on hunting, a sentence that only partially satisfies the relatives of the Franco-Briton, who died while chopping wood at his home , in a village in the Lot. The Cahors Criminal Court also sentenced Thursday the director of the hunt, during which the hunting accident had occurred, to 18 months in prison suspended and a withdrawal of the hunting license for five years.
The court followed the prosecutor’s requisitions on the length of the sentence, but did not order a prison sentence, while the public prosecutor had requested six months’ imprisonment. The prosecutor had also requested a permanent withdrawal of the hunting license for the two defendants. “We are rather satisfied with the lifetime withdrawal of the hunting license” of the shooter, said Zoé Monchecourt, of the collective Un jour un chasseur, created by relatives of Morgan Keane to change the legislation on hunting. “On the other hand, we are not at all happy about the hunt director”, whose ban on hunting is not final, she added.
“The message sent is that if you kill someone, there are absolutely no consequences”
“Justice has done its job well”, within the limits of what the legislation in force allows, estimated the lawyer for Morgan Keane’s brother, Benoit Coussy. “Now, the legislator must do his job and create a specific + hunting crime +” which could allow more severity in this kind of business, he added.
In this case, the author of the shooting, Julien Féral, 35, was prosecuted for manslaughter. “The death of Morgan Keane is perhaps the beginning of the death of a certain hunt, unpunished,” he said. “The message that is sent (by justice, editor’s note) is that if you kill someone, there is absolutely no consequence”, reacted, moved, Peggy, a friend of Morgan Keane, considering the derisory suspended sentence. “I understand that he does not necessarily represent a public danger but for me it is still necessary to send a message that killing someone is not nothing,” she insists. “And the campaign is to be shared with other users”.
For his part Michel Bouscary, president of the Federation of Lot hunters, considered that the judgment “confirms us in relation to what we are putting in place in terms of security”. The hunting federation was a civil party in this case, in support of the prosecution.
Taken for a boar
On December 2, 2020, Morgan Keane, 25, was chopping wood on land he owned near the village of Calvignac when he was hit by a bullet fired by a hunter who mistook him for a wild boar. . The death of Morgan Keane has become emblematic of the difficulties of cohabitation between hunters and other rural people, who are often opposed to this practice. At the hearing, on November 17, the hunter, “sorry” for his gesture, admitted not having “identified the target well”. The investigation revealed that he did not know the place, that he had been posted in a badly chosen place without having received the necessary safety instructions, and that several irregularities had been noted in the conduct of the search.
In France, the number of hunting accidents has been falling for 20 years, according to the French Office for Biodiversity (OFB). Nevertheless, for the 2021/22 season, the OFB recorded 90 hunting accidents, compared to 80 the previous season. Among them, eight fatal accidents, including two involving non-hunter victims. But, for Un jour un chasseur, “the problem of security is not only the dead and injured” but also many incidents that the OFB does not list.