Former anesthesiologist Frédéric Péchier, sentenced Thursday to life imprisonment for poisoning 30 patients, 12 of whom died, filed a request for release pending his appeal trial, the Besançon public prosecutor’s office announced on Friday, December 19. This request, filed on Thursday, “will be examined by the investigating chamber of the Court of Appeal of Besançon within two months”said the prosecution in a press release.
The 53-year-old doctor has always maintained his innocence. Found guilty by the Doubs Assize Court after three and a half months of an exceptional trial, he was incarcerated in the Besançon remand center immediately after the verdict. He had never been detained before and appeared free at his trial.
Frédéric Péchier having appealed his conviction from the day of the verdict, he will be retried “within one year from December 18, 2025”before an assize court which “is not yet designated”added the general prosecutor’s office.
According to the accusation, the practitioner polluted infusion bags with different products to cause cardiac arrest or hemorrhages in patients operated on by colleagues, in order to harm caregivers with whom he was in conflict.
His lawyer, Randall Schwerdorffer, had pleaded for acquittal, highlighting a lack of irrefutable evidence and an accusation resulting, according to him, from a “intellectual construction”.
