Dominique Cottrez was convicted on July 2, 2015, by the Cour d'assises du Nord, sitting at Douai, of killing eight of her newborn children. The births and deaths took place at separate times between late 1989 and 2000 in Villers-au-Tertre, a village in the Nord department of northern France, and the case came to light in July 2010. The jury found premeditation in seven of the killings and not in the first, recognized an impairment of her discernment at the time, and sentenced her to nine years in prison, half of the 18 years the prosecution had requested.
The case is also a landmark in French criminal procedure. Because the births and deaths had been hidden, the ten-year limitation period for serious crimes appeared to have run out for most of the victims before anyone knew of them. After more than three years of argument across several courts, the full Court of Cassation ruled on November 7, 2014 that prosecution was still possible.
Villers-au-Tertre is a small village in the north of France. The Associated Press described Cottrez in 2010 as a nursing assistant, then 46 years old. She was married and had two daughters, both grown by the time the case came to light. The prosecutor in Douai, Eric Vaillant, told reporters in July 2010 that she had been perfectly conscious of each pregnancy. She told the investigators that after a bad experience with her first pregnancy she never wanted to see a doctor again.
Her husband said he had known nothing of the pregnancies. The Associated Press reported from the opening of the trial in 2015 that he had not noticed them, and the investigation ended without proceedings against the daughters over any knowledge of the events, according to Le Quotidien du Medecin.
The record does not name any of the eight children. They were her own newborns, born on separate occasions without medical help and killed shortly afterward. The jury at Douai treated the first, in late 1989, as a murder without premeditation. The following seven it treated as murders with premeditation. Reports of the trial give the last of the eight as 2000. An early press account in 2010 had put the span of the births at 1989 to 2007, and a later agency report on the Court of Cassation ruling gave 1987 to 2000; the reports from the 2015 trial agree on late 1989 and 2000.
The prosecution argued at trial that after the first death the later ones showed a settled purpose. The deputy prosecutor, Annelise Cau, described what followed as marked by determination, organization and composure, according to Le Quotidien du Medecin. The defense argued for leniency on the strength of her state of mind. The experts consulted during the investigation had disagreed about it, and the trial reopened the question.
The case came to light in July 2010. Cottrez and her husband were both detained for questioning. Cottrez admitted the killings to the investigators. She was charged and held in custody. Her husband was released without charge, under judicial control; Vaillant said at the time that he could still face a charge of failing to report a crime, and in November 2014 AFP wrote that he might yet be tried for concealing a crime. He denied knowing of the pregnancies or the deaths. No charge against him is on record, and at the 2015 trial he appeared as a witness and was listed among the civil parties.
The two daughters were also questioned. The investigating magistrates ordered no proceedings against them over what they knew, and the daughters were due to testify at the trial, where they were expected to join the case as civil parties. At the verdict in 2015 the husband and daughters embraced her, Le Quotidien du Medecin reported, and the daughters had asked the court not to send their mother back to prison.
Cottrez was held in pretrial detention for two years. In August 2012 she was released under judicial supervision, AFP reported, with an obligation to continue the mental health care she had been receiving.
French law set a ten-year limitation period on prosecution of crimes, counted from the day the crime was committed (article 7 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, as it then stood). Most of the births had occurred more than ten years before July 2010. In 2012 AFP wrote that an expert had concluded at least seven of the eight children were born more than ten years before the case came to light. Nevertheless, the investigating chamber at Douai, the court that reviews investigations, held in the autumn of 2011 that the period had not expired, as AFP reported.
The Court of Cassation's criminal chamber took a stricter view. On October 16, 2013 it quashed the ruling that had treated the concealment of the births and deaths as an insurmountable obstacle to prosecution. The case was sent to the Paris court of appeal's investigating chamber, which on May 19, 2014 resisted, fixing the start of the limitation period at July 24, 2010, the day the case came to light, on the reasoning that the authorities had been wholly unable to act before then, according to the legal commentary in Le Petit Juriste.
Because the two chambers' positions diverged on a question of such importance, the matter went to the full Court of Cassation sitting as the plenary assembly. On November 7, 2014 (appeal no. 14-83.739) it rejected Cottrez's appeal. Le Monde du Droit reported the core of the holding as that prescription is suspended when there is an insurmountable obstacle to the exercise of prosecution. According to Le Petit Juriste, the court reasoned that no one had been in a position to inquire about the disappearance of children born in secret and dead in anonymity ("nul n'a ete en mesure de s'inquieter de la disparition d'enfants nes clandestinement, morts dans l'anonymat"), so the period had been suspended until the case came to light. AFP reported, through The Local, that the court said she must stand trial in 2015 for the willful killing of eight minors under 15.
The trial opened on Thursday, June 25, 2015, before the Cour d'assises du Nord at Douai, presided over by Anne Segond. Cottrez, then 51, faced multiple counts of murder of minors and a possible sentence of life imprisonment. The Associated Press reported that dozens of forensic and psychiatric experts, investigators and other witnesses were due to testify, and that her husband and daughters were among them. Her memory of the later births and deaths was described as blurred.
On July 1 the prosecution asked for 18 years, not life. Vaillant asked the jury to accept extenuating circumstances because of her psychological difficulties.
The jury of nine deliberated for about five hours, according to Le Quotidien du Medecin, and returned its verdict on Thursday, July 2, 2015. The Associated Press reported the convictions as seven counts of first-degree murder and one count of second-degree murder, the second-degree count covering the first child. In the French terms reported by Le Quotidien du Medecin, the jurors did not accept premeditation for the first killing and accepted a settled purpose (dessein arrete) for the others. They also found an impairment of her discernment (altération du discernement) at the time of the killings. The Associated Press worded the finding as: her judgment was impaired at the time of the killings. The sentence was nine years.
Her pretrial detention ran from 2010 to 2012, when she was released under supervision. Her release arrangements after the sentence are not on record.
The case is remembered in France for the legal question it settled. Before November 2014, the position of the criminal chamber was that concealment could not stop the limitation period. After the plenary assembly's ruling, the concealment of a birth and death could count as an insurmountable obstacle that suspended it.
Late 1989: the first of the eight births and deaths.
2000: the last of the eight.
July 2010: the case comes to light; Cottrez admits the killings and is held in custody; her husband is released without charge.
Autumn 2011: the investigating chamber at Douai holds that the limitation period has not run out.
August 2012: released under judicial supervision after two years in detention.
October 16, 2013: criminal chamber of the Court of Cassation quashes the Douai-stage ruling.
May 19, 2014: the Paris investigating chamber, on remand, sets the start of the period at July 24, 2010.
November 7, 2014: the plenary assembly of the Court of Cassation rejects her appeal (no. 14-83.739).
June 25, 2015: trial opens at Douai.
July 2, 2015: verdict and sentence of nine years.