Fifteen months after the tragedy, the trial of Dominique Critelli opened on February 21, 1983 at the Pau courthouse. Unusually, the Court began by imposing a fine on a priest from Pau drawn by lot from the electoral lists. The man of the church refuses to sit alongside the magistrates because, according to him, his status as a clergyman forbids him to take the oath of the jurors. A state of mind that will cost him a hundred francs fine. From the box, the accused is the trial of his neighbor who has become his victim: “the barking of the dogs, it had become torture; I had nevertheless tried everything; I was in pain; that night I lost my patience; I rushed outside in my pajamas and slippers, armed with my rifle ”. The President of the Court insisted: “Who were you targeting, your two neighbors or their dogs?” “. Critelli had claimed, in police custody, to have fired on the silhouettes of Michel and Thérèse Dulucq. He varies today, saying he “thought he was shooting the shadow of the two dogs”.
An incredible explanation
Among the audience, some guessed the paw of Critelli’s lawyer in this clever about-face. Fearing a heavy sentence, the accused offered himself the services of the Bayonnais Maurice Abeberry, an orator as brilliant as cultivated, who made this trial the emblem of modern nuisances. The lawyer has a Parisian psychiatrist testify at the bar who explains that the repetition of annoying and painful noises cause major disturbances on the nervous system. Clearly, the accused was so exhausted by the stress of the noise that his ordeal led him to commit the irreparable. “It was enough to move the two dogs,” concluded another witness, regretting that a gesture of peace had not put an end to his suffering. Against this irascible murder, Advocate General Muller requires ten years of imprisonment. At the time of the verdict, the Court renders a judgment worthy of King Solomon. She cuts the pear in half as a sign of appeasement: Critelli will serve five years in prison.