A French court has annulled the murder conviction of Dany Leprince, a man once branded in the media as the butcher of the Sarthe, more than three decades after a quadruple killing that became one of the country's enduring criminal enigmas. The ruling clears the way for a new trial in a case that had appeared long settled.
The decision came from France's Court of Revision, which accepted Leprince's request to have his conviction overturned. Such an outcome is described as very rare, standing as only the 13th time a revision request has succeeded in the French justice system.
The case dates back to 1994, when four members of the same family were killed in a house in the Sarthe. Leprince, who worked at a meat-processing plant, was accused of murdering his brother, his sister-in-law and two of their daughters, his nieces, in a crime prosecutors attributed to jealousy.
After making partial admissions, Leprince was convicted in 1997 and sentenced to life imprisonment with a 22-year security period. He was released from prison in 2012, having spent 18 years behind bars for the killings.
Now, the justice system itself has voiced doubts about his guilt. According to the court, the case that had been built against Leprince has collapsed, with two key pieces of testimony called into question as part of the review.
One was the account of Solene Leprince, the sole survivor of the tragedy, who was just two years old at the time. The other was the incriminating testimony of Leprince's ex-wife. Even so, a lawyer for the ex-wife stressed that annulling the conviction was not a declaration of innocence.
With his conviction annulled, Leprince will now be retried before a cour d'assises in Maine-et-Loire, where a jury will weigh the case afresh. At 69 years old, he has said he hopes finally to be definitively cleared, and he remains presumed innocent as the new proceedings approach.
Leaving the courtroom with tears in his eyes, Leprince said the truth had to come out, a sentiment that captured the weight of a legal battle stretching back more than 30 years. The retrial will reopen a case that has haunted France, testing whether a fresh look at the evidence will confirm or unravel the original verdict.