Young woman retried for killing her bedridden grandfather by setting fire to his bed

Before the Rhône Assize Court in October, Émilie G., 33, pleaded "an act of love," claiming she acted to end the suffering of the 95-year-old man who was demanding to die. It was a "cruel and selfish act," retorted the public prosecutor, demanding fifteen years of imprisonment for the young woman, accused of having acted "to exorcise her frustration and her multiple failures."

With the jury opting for leniency, the prosecution appealed the verdict, sending the case back to the Ain Assize Court from Monday to Wednesday. Meanwhile, Parliament adopted a bill on assisted dying and end-of-life care at first reading , a sensitive issue that is expected to resurface in the debates.

The young woman faces life imprisonment. In August 2020, her grandfather was found burned to death and asphyxiated in his hospital bed at the home of one of his daughters in Saint-Laurent-de-Mure (Rhône).

Placed in police custody two months after the fire, Émilie G. admitted to setting the bed ablaze. "She realizes in hindsight that she shouldn't have done it and that she shouldn't have done it that way, but at the time of the incident, she no longer had the strength to do otherwise," according to her lawyer, Maître Thibaud Claus.

During her first trial, this woman suffering from depression explained that she had struggled to manage the care of the nonagenarian, the education of her children, her relationship problems and her multiple failures in the Capes, the teaching exam.

“Did he die with dignity?”

Very close to the old man, whom she cared for daily, she testified to the shock she felt when she saw him equipped with a urinary catheter and diapers, in a pitiful state, first in a nursing home, then at his parents' house who had taken him in. On the morning of the crime, her partner revealed to her that he had cheated on her, triggering the act. According to a psychiatric expert, she was in a "dissociative state" "likely to impair her judgment" when she poured gasoline on the mattress and threw a burning sheet of paper on the bed.