Before retiring, the jurors will hear one last time Mr. Reiser, against whom life imprisonment with 22 years of security, the maximum sentence, was requested on Monday. The one who defended himself step by step during his trial will have the floor at 9 a.m., after a highly publicized trial.
The six jurors and the three judges will then lock themselves in the deliberation room to answer two questions: Jean-Marc Reiser, 61, did he voluntarily kill Sophie Le Tan, whose incomplete skeleton was not found? that in October 2019, more than a year after his disappearance, on September 7, 2018, his 20th birthday?
And did he premeditate the crime with which he is charged?
This question of premeditation contains all the stakes of the trial. If Mr. Reiser admitted at the hearing, as he has done since January 2021, having killed Sophie, he denies on the other hand any homicidal intention and, above all, any premeditation: he never prepared or wanted her death.
– “Attracting its prey” –
He and his three lawyers hammered it: it was a “regrettable coincidence” that put Sophie Le Tan on her way. On September 7, he sees her while he is at the bottom of his house. She had come to visit his apartment which he had rented out via a website, but he had forgotten about this appointment after having spent the previous night drinking.
According to his version, it was at his house, after the visit, that things degenerated: the young woman’s rejection of his attempt at a “kiss” plunged Mr. Reiser into an uncontrollable “state of fury”, he wheeled her punches and kicks, she falls heavily and remains inanimate.
Prostrate according to him for several hours, he makes the decision to cut up the body and hide it in the forest.
A scenario of the “chance meeting” and the “cable failure” rejected by the prosecution and the civil parties: “It is indeed a trap that she fell”, concluded the Advocate General Laurent Guy, sweeping the thesis, put forward by the defence, with an impulsive gesture that Mr. Reiser would then have tried to conceal in haste.
For the prosecution, on the contrary, he published a false rental ad with the aim of trapping a young student corresponding to his taste for Asian women – Sophie was of Vietnamese origin -, dismissing the profiles that did not suit her. In the end, “the only young woman who will walk through the door of Jean-Marc Reiser’s apartment will not come out,” pointed out Mr. Guy.
For the civil parties also, the premeditation “is beyond doubt”: “He organizes himself to attract his prey into his web”, estimated Me Rémi Stephan, one of the lawyers for the Le Tan family.
On the defense side, we tried to instill doubt in the minds of the jurors, trying to convince them that their client, whom they know will be convicted, had not calculated anything and is therefore not guilty. murder but intentional violence resulting in death without the intention of giving it. A charge that would run Mr. Reiser, tried as a legal recidivism, not life but 30 years in prison.
– “White death” –
“There is no certainty with regard to Jean-Marc Reiser that he premeditated the death of Sophie Le Tan”, estimated Me Xavier Metzger, recalling that the doubt should benefit the accused.
The maximum sentence required, “it’s white death”, “death in prison” for Mr. Reiser, warned Me Francis Metzger, another counsel for the sexagenarian.
“We hope that there will be the maximum sentence”, declared Laurent Tran Van Mang, one of the civil parties, judging the requisitions “fair”.
One unknown remains: how did Sophie die? Has she been sexually abused? The questions were raised during the proceedings, even though Mr. Reiser is not being prosecuted for rape. “What happened? Only he knows (…) We only have the Reiserian version”, lamented Me Gérard Welzer, another lawyer for the civil parties.
