Priority constitutional question dismissed, review trial scheduled for this fall

Raymond Mis and Gabriel Thiennot were convicted of murder and then pardoned after the death of a gamekeeper in 1946, but they were never exonerated.

In the 78-year-old Mis and Thiennot case, the Court of Revision rejected the priority question of constitutionality (QPC) filed by the daughter of Louis Boistard, a gamekeeper shot in December 1946, reports France Bleu Berry, Saturday, June 29. It will not be transmitted to the Constitutional Council. Thus, the retrial of Raymond Mis and Gabriel Thiennot, convicted of murder and then pardoned but never exonerated, is maintained. “The goal is that in the fall we will achieve innocence this time,” declared on Saturday on France Bleu Berry, Me Pierre-Emmanuel Blard, lawyer of the support committee of Raymond Mis and Gabriel Thiennot.

The two young hunters, who were in their twenties at the time of the events, had confessed to the murder in early 1947 before retracting. They had never stopped proclaiming their innocence until being pardoned in 1954 by President René Coty, without being exonerated for all that. Raymond Mis and Gabriel Thiennot died in 2009 and 2003 respectively.

“A review trial consists of examining whether the verdict rendered at the time is a justified verdict or not in light of the new situation. What is the new situation?“, asks François Saint-Pierre, the lawyer for the daughter of the gamekeeper who was killed, on France Bleu Berry. “The question is whether the convictions of Mis and Thiennot were justified only by their confessions, or by other evidence as well. Or whether, on the contrary, it was other evidence that justified them. And this evidence is testimony, it is material evidence. We will talk about it in detail when the time comes.”he adds.

Since 1980, six previous requests for review had been filed, all rejected.