Jean-Marc Reiser, sentenced on Thursday by the Haut-Rhin Assize Court to life imprisonment with twenty-two years of security for the assassination of Sophie Le Tan in 2018, is appealing in cassation, let it be known to Agence France-Presse (AFP) his lawyers. Mr. Reiser, who had five days to do so, filed this appeal on Monday July 3, said his lawyers, Mes Emmanuel Spano and Thomas Steinmetz, confirming information from the Latest News from Alsace.
Last week, the Assize Court sentenced the 62-year-old man on appeal to the same sentence as at first instance, the heaviest he faced. The objective of this appeal is now to obtain the annulment of this judgment of the Assize Court of Appeal.
Premeditation contested
If he admitted to having killed in September 2018 the young student of 20 years of Vietnamese origin “in a fit of fury”, then having dismembered her with a hacksaw before going to bury the remains of the body in a forest , he has, on the other hand, always denied having premeditated his gesture.
But the jurors did not follow the arguments of this man with a heavy judicial past, tried in a state of legal recidivism after a first conviction for rape and sexual assault in 2003, and who was facing Colmar in his sixth assize trial.
Despite a long investigation and two trials, some gray areas persist, including the exact cause of the death of the student. According to his story, Jean-Marc Reiser had tried, after visiting his apartment, to take Sophie Le Tan’s hand and give her a kiss. She then pushed him away insultingly, causing him “a fit of fury” that resulted in multiple blows. The student then collapsed, fatally hitting the toilet bowl.
The defense thus hoped that the jurors would retain only “assaults causing death without intention to give it”, which would have implied a symbolically less heavy sentence of thirty years of imprisonment.