French Court Rules Double Murderer Not Criminally Responsible Due to Mental Illness
Montpellier, France – The investigating chamber of the Montpellier Court of Appeals has declared the perpetrator of a double murder in Roujan (Hérault) in January 2022 to be criminally irresponsible. The court ruled that he was "suffering from a mental or neuropsychiatric disorder that abolished his discernment" at the time of the crimes.
Jordan Garnier, 25, has been involuntarily hospitalized in a psychiatric facility and will not stand trial for the murders. Three psychiatrists evaluated Garnier during the investigation. One expert concluded that his discernment was impaired at the time of the killings. Two other experts found that his discernment was completely abolished due to an acute psychotic episode triggered by cannabis use.
The double murder occurred on January 14, 2022. That Friday evening, Garnier entered the family restaurant run by his parents, located directly across from the home where he lived with his partner Amélie, a 21-year-old nursing student. "I messed up," he told his family, his eyes vacant and his clothes covered in blood.
Garnier’s father immediately went to the couple’s apartment and discovered the lifeless bodies of Amélie, who had been nearly decapitated, and Caroline, a 25-year-old neighbor and ambulance technician who lived on the floor above. An examination of the bodies revealed multiple stab wounds.
Garnier was apprehended by gendarmes, placed in custody, and then charged with murder. During his initial interrogation, the suspect admitted to stabbing both women. He claimed to have been experiencing psychological problems, stating that he had been "feeling very bad" for several days and had consulted a general practitioner the morning of the murders. He was given a one-month leave of absence due to "anxiety and distress."
Garnier also admitted to having smoked several joints of cannabis with his partner that afternoon and subsequently experiencing intense fear, believing that people were "trying to kill him." In a state he described as "delirious and panicked," he stabbed his partner Amélie 80 times. Convinced that she was turning into a "zombie," he attempted to decapitate her.
Moments later, he stabbed Caroline, who had just left her apartment to walk her dog. The young neighbor was stabbed 30 times. Again, Garnier claimed to have felt that "she wanted to kill him or was going to get other people to kill him." Disturbingly, he reported that the faces of his victims "morphed."
Interviewed at the time, Garnier’s father told investigators that he had noticed a change in his son’s behavior since he began using cannabis in July 2021. Garnier had confided in his family that he sometimes "felt like he was outside of his body." The previously law-abiding killer spent excessive time on his computer, frequently playing violent video games, and was obsessed with horror movies.
It is worth noting that, in the wake of the Sarah Halimi case, a law passed on January 24, 2022, "precludes criminal irresponsibility when the temporary abolition of discernment results from the voluntary consumption, within a short period of time of the act, of psychoactive substances with the intent to commit a crime or offense." However, the court dismissed this hypothesis in the Roujan double murder case.
"From a legal standpoint, I believe this is a desirable decision inasmuch as it has been established that the act was provoked by a form of psychotic episode that prevented him from exercising any discernment whatsoever," commented Pierre Debuisson, Garnier’s defense attorney, to Le Figaro. "My client suffered from a serious psychological disorder, schizophrenia, which was exacerbated by cannabis. The question was, ‘Was cannabis used in preparation for the act?’ The cannabis triggered a persecutory psychotic episode, this was not an act that he intended. It would be absurd to consider putting a man on trial who was in a state of complete madness: this is a fundamental principle of French law."
"My thoughts are with the victims’ families who will not be able to receive an explanation through a trial that will never take place, and I sympathize with their suffering. I hope that the psychiatric care will be serious and long-term. My client needs to be treated and treated well," Debuisson continued. "I know of cases where murderers have been released a year or a year and a half after being deemed irresponsible. I find that to be outrageous and very dangerous for society. I would not want that to happen to my client and for us to be told in two years that he is stable."
"This case is an opportunity to make an initial assessment of the law of January 24, 2022, which was heralded as capable of preventing an outcome similar to the Sarah Halimi case," added Iris Christol, the attorney representing Amélie’s family. "Under the new law, Kobili Traoré (Sarah Halimi’s murderer, Editor’s Note) would also be declared irresponsible and would not be punished."
"With this new law, it is necessary to prove that the criminal intentionally consumed narcotics in order to commit the crime. This will be impossible to prove because the only people who take drugs to kill are terrorists in the context of suicide bombings, from which they do not survive. Therefore, nothing has changed with this new law. It is extremely difficult for Amélie’s family, given that the act was a combination of resentment, cannabis, and mental disorder, to accept that everything is being attributed to mental illness," the lawyer concluded.
