Court of Revision: two Berry hunters remain convicted of 1946 murder
The highest revision court has rejected the latest attempt to exonerate Raymond Mis and Gabriel Thiennot, tried in 1946 for killing a gamekeeper in the Indre.
Court of Revision: two Berry hunters remain convicted of 1946 murder
The seventh revision application was rejected on 2 July by the Court of Revision. It sought to overturn the conviction of Raymond Mis and Gabriel Thiennot, two Berry hunters found guilty in 1946 of killing Louis Boistard, a gamekeeper, in Saint-Michel-en-Brenne.
The tragedy took place in the post-war context. The two men had been sentenced to fifteen years of hard labour following a dispute with the victim. Over the decades, numerous voices had called for their innocence, pointing to shortcomings in the original investigation. The case made an impression in the region: around thirty communes in Berry named streets or squares in honour of the two convicted men.
Nicolas Bonnal, the magistrate presiding over the Court, explained the verdict by emphasising that, even if investigators at the time had not exhausted all hypotheses, the evidence in the file justified their suspicions falling on this group of hunters. He clarified that this analysis held even after the recent withdrawal of certain documents obtained under duress by law enforcement.
Mis and Thiennot have since died.
Source: franceinfo
Source: France Info