Pierre Palmade is on trial this Wednesday, November 20 following the accident which occurred a year and a half ago and which left three seriously injured. The victims’ lawyer said he was scandalized before the trial.
Pierre Palmade is on trial for “unintentional injuries” this Wednesday, November 20 before the criminal court of Melun, in Seine-et-Marne. The trial deals with a highly publicized case: on February 10, 2023, the actor and humorist was involved in a serious road accident that occurred in Seine-et-Marne. While under the influence of drugs, he drove a vehicle which veered onto the wrong lane and hit another car.
Three people belonging to the same family were seriously injured: a man in his forties, his six-year-old son, and his sister-in-law who was more than six months pregnant at the time. The driver suffered multiple trauma, having undergone numerous operations following the impact. “I have such intense pain that I am exhausted and I feel like my brain is going to explode,” he testified to Seven to eight last November 10. Her son suffered a broken jaw.
Manslaughter was not found
Her sister-in-law lost her unborn baby following the collision with Pierre Palmade’s car. However, the comedian is not being prosecuted for “involuntary manslaughter” in the context of this case, which his lawyer considers “scandalous”. He believes in fact that he cannot rule out responsibility for the accident in the context of the death of this child: “There, we had a fetus which was going to be born alive and reliable and which was unable to do so because of the accident. There is a direct causal link between the death of this child and the accident, declared Me Mourad Battikh at the microphone of RTL on November 17. And legally, we draw no consequences from it.”
In French law, a fetus has no legal status. We can therefore only speak of manslaughter if the child was born and breathed before dying. Which would not have been the case in the case of the Palmade affair. In fact, a medical expertise concluded that the child had died in utero, therefore before giving birth, which means that the charge of involuntary manslaughter was not brought against Pierre Palmade by the Melun public prosecutor’s office. Today, the victim, for whom the hardest thing “is that her child is considered ‘nothing’ by the State”, “is still affected by the loss of this child who was about to be born”, according to Me Mourad Battikh.
Latest updates
09:00 – What has become of Pierre Palmade since the accident?
Since the accident which occurred on February 10, 2023, Pierre Palmade has lived as a recluse in Bordeaux according to information from Le Parisien. While Seven to eight revealed that he wrote anonymously for other comedians, the national daily said that he has been living off royalties and insurance since his stroke. However, he would live a solitary life, only going out to do his shopping according to an acquaintance, and once a week to take a drug and alcohol test, which would be negative and would demonstrate his abstinence for several months.
08:22 – What does Pierre Palmade risk?
Pierre Palmade is on trial this Wednesday, November 20 for “unintentional injuries” with aggravating circumstances (he tested positive for narcotics) before the Melun criminal court following the road accident that occurred on February 10, 2023. The prosecutor had detailed in last May that “because of his state of legal recidivism, he faces a sentence of 14 years of imprisonment and a fine of 200,000 euros”. Indeed, the comedian had already been convicted in 2019 for drug use.
07:25 – How are the victims doing since Pierre Palmade’s accident?
The trial of Pierre Palmade opens this Wednesday, November 20 from 9 a.m. before the Melun criminal court. Remember that the French comedian, under the influence of drugs, collided with another car driving in the opposite direction on February 10, 2023, causing three serious injuries. The lawyer for the civil parties, Me Mourad Battikh, gave news this Sunday, November 17 on RTL: the victims are “doing better physically” and are “recovering slowly but surely from their injuries and the shock they suffered” . However, he wanted to clarify that on a psychological level, “it is much more complicated to rebuild oneself”. The driver remains polytraumatized with significant pain, while his son, 6 years old at the time of the accident, has significant scars on his head which keep him isolated, as his father detailed to Seven to eight on November 10. The woman who was pregnant at the time of the tragedy, who lost her six-month-old fetus after the collision, “is still affected” by the loss of her unborn child, said her lawyer.