2023-12-26 05:00:00
At the end of the evening of a party at the Florenville carnival, a motorist hit a parked car and fled. The owner of the damaged car filed a complaint at the police station. The police officer who registered her complaint noticed, in the parking lot, when leaving the police station, that the vehicle of one of his colleagues showed damage more than compatible with that observed by the woman. It turned out that his fellow police officer was the perpetrator of the hit-and-run.
Given his not very good criminal record, the police court sentenced him to a €1,600 fine, three months forfeiture of his license and the obligation to retake the four exams, theoretical, technical, psychological and medical in order to be able to retrieve it.
The police officer appealed the judgment. His lawyer, Me Dimitri Soblet, mainly argued to disregard the motivation of the first judge: “A police officer must obviously not be privileged before the courts, but he cannot be punished more than another because he is a police officer. I cannot accept that the judge stigmatizes my client by specifying in It is expected that such behavior is unjustifiable and hardly compatible with the status of a police officer.”
Increase in fine
The three judges of the Court of Appeal, chaired by Philippe Nazé, followed Me Soblet on this point by reaffirming that “criminal law must be egalitarian and that the magistrates of the seat and the public prosecutor must ensure identical application of the law between all litigants”.
Mr. Soblet had also pleaded for a form of leniency by requesting a reprieve for his client, so as not to tarnish his professional situation. The judges did not follow him. They insisted on the seriousness of the hit-and-run and the defendant’s criminal record. The Court recalled the article of the Penal Code “which sentences to an aggravated penalty, the civil servant or public officer who is guilty of an offense which he is responsible for establishing”.
The fugitive sees the sentence to which he was sentenced at first instance confirmed, with the exception of the fine which was doubled. It goes from €1,600 to €3,200.
1703643360
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