This is the key to knowing if there will be a trial after the death of Lola, found on October 14 in Paris: the expertise psychiatrics on Dahbia B., indicted for murder and aggravated rape then placed in pre-trial detention.
>> Murder of Lola: what is the profile of the suspect?
This Wednesday, November 16, as Lola’s family, loved ones and college friends gather in the afternoon in Paris for a “worthy” tribute in the neighborhood where the 12-year-old girl lived and where she was killed in tragic circumstances in mid-October, experts are looking into the profile of the main suspect in this case. Does she have a mental illness, schizophrenia or paranoid psychosis? If disorders are detected, the issue will then be to know if there is an alteration or abolition of discernment.
If it is the alteration of discernment that is retained, there will be a trial at the assizes. If it’s theabolition, the trial cannot take place, Dahbia B., aged 24, will then be hospitalized in a psychiatric establishment. “There must first be a mental illnessexplains the psychiatrist Roland Coutanceau, expert with the courts. Then, a mental illness in acute attack, where there are delusional elements. The third element, which for me is essential, is precisely these delusional elements, those outside of reality, which are the patient’s motivational system. When you have these three elements, most psychiatrists will propose the abolition of discernment.”
These three criteria can be accompanied by a long series of evaluations. In the event of disagreement, the expert opinions, second expert opinions and over-expert opinions may follow one another. However, the delays are also getting longer: two years in the Sarah Halimi case, this 60-year-old Jew killed in Paris in 2017. Since then, the law changed to create an exception to criminal immunity: voluntary consumption of narcotics.
The presence in France of the suspect, an Algerian national under an obligation to leave French territory (OQTF), has aroused virulent criticism on the right and the far right, the government castigating “indecency” of this “political recovery“. The family repeatedly requested that “cease urgently“any use “the name and image of their child for political purposes“. Finally, on October 19, Dahbia B.’s lawyer ruled out the racist motive and called for an end to the “misinformation or even lies” around this case. Me Alexandre Silva wanted to deny the rumor that “would consist in implying that the motive for the murder of little Lola would be animated by a racist motive“, during a press briefing at the Paris Court of Justice. “This mobile is absolutely not verified, it is false, it was never considered“, he asserted.