Pierre Bodein was convicted of three murders committed in the Barr and Obernai area of Bas-Rhin, in Alsace, between June 18 and 25, 2004. The victims were Jeanne-Marie Kegelin, aged 10, Julie Scharsch, aged 14, and Hedwige Vallée, aged 38. He had been released on conditional release on March 15, 2004, while serving a twenty-year term that came from three earlier criminal sentences, and he had spent most of his adult life in prison or in psychiatric hospitals.
The case matters in French law for two reasons. The first is the sentence. On July 11, 2007, the Bas-Rhin assize court sentenced Bodein to life imprisonment and ruled that none of the measures that normally let a prisoner leave early could ever be granted. Press reports and later commentary described him as the first person in France given this "perpétuité réelle", also called incompressible life. The Haut-Rhin assize court upheld it on appeal in October 2008, the Court of Cassation dismissed his further appeal in January 2010, and in November 2014 the European Court of Human Rights decided that the sentence did not breach the European Convention on Human Rights. The second reason is the release that preceded the killings. Members of the National Assembly and the Minister of Justice named him in parliamentary debates on recidivism and on security detention in 2007 and 2008.
Several people were accused alongside him in the case of the youngest victim. They were discharged before trial or acquitted at the first trial, and Bodein alone was convicted. He denied the killings throughout the proceedings.
Pierre Bodein was born on December 30, 1947. Almost nothing about his childhood or his family has been made public. What the record does show is a long run of offenses beginning when he was an adult.
Le JDD wrote in September 2008, when he was 60, that his criminal career began at the age of 22 and that he had by then spent more than thirty years in prison. The paper listed about twenty bank robberies, numerous burglaries, an escape from a psychiatric hospital, attempted abductions and, finally, murders. It described a path that moved from robbery to attacks on police officers and then to killing.
According to the Court's judgment, his criminal record showed nine convictions between 1969 and 2008, four of them handed down by assize courts. Vice, in an article published on the day of the European judgment, dated his first conviction to 1969, for robberies with violence and holdups. The same article said that psychiatric experts examined him in 1976 and that he was released in 1980, then arrested again in 1989 after further violence and placed in a psychiatric hospital.
Vice's English edition reported that in 1992 he escaped from the psychiatric institution and spent three days at large. The sentence recorded by the Court is dated later: on February 9, 1996, the Bas-Rhin assize court sentenced him to twenty years in prison for attempted murder, aggravated theft, escape from hospital, theft and violence. That judgment later mattered a second time. In October 2008 the appeal court based its finding of legal recidivism on it.
The Court's judgment adds a detail about how the numbers worked. Bodein had received three criminal sentences between 1994 and 1996, which together came to fifty-four years. They were served within the highest legal maximum for such a combination, twenty years of criminal imprisonment. An answer given by the Minister of Justice in October 2005 to a written question in the National Assembly gave the same structure: he had been held since November 15, 1990, under three sentences of 19, 15 and 20 years, with the effective term capped at twenty years.
The psychiatric dimension of his history was argued repeatedly in later years. Michel Patris, the psychiatrist who examined Bodein five times for the appeal trial, was quoted by Vice as saying that Bodein had deceived the experts of the 1970s by pretending to be mentally ill. In Patris's view, as Le JDD reported it, Bodein was a psychopath, not a man with a mental illness. The Court's judgment says that several experts described a psychopathic personality with a perverse dimension and judged him dangerous because of his impulsiveness and his tendency to reoffend.
He had been held since November 1990. The European Court's judgment records that conditional release was granted on February 25, 2004, and that he was freed on March 15, 2004. A written answer from the Ministry of Justice, published in October 2005, said that the sentence-enforcement judge granted the release on March 15, 2004, and that he remained under supervision until January 25, 2006. The two documents differ on which date counts as the grant; both agree that he left prison in the middle of March 2004.
Le JDD wrote in 2008 that conditional release was granted against medical advice, and Christian Vanneste, a member of the National Assembly, told the chamber in July 2007 that a victim's mother had said the authorities knew he was dangerous and that an expert had found him free of psychiatric illness, though still capable of danger outside custody. The ministry's answer of 2005 did not discuss the merits of the release, citing the separation of powers while the case was still before the courts. It restated the rules that applied: the possibility of extended supervision for sex offenders after release, a national register, and a proposed law on electronic monitoring of dangerous offenders. It also set out that the State is liable for failings of the justice system only in cases of gross fault or denial of justice.
Three people were killed within about a week of each other, between June 18 and 25, 2004, in an area within roughly twenty kilometers of Barr and Obernai, in the Bas-Rhin department. The European Court of Human Rights, summarizing the findings of the French investigating judges, named them by initials. The press named them. Jeanne-Marie Kegelin was ten years old. Julie Scharsch was fourteen. Hedwige Vallée was thirty-eight. The Reuters report printed by Le JDD in October 2008 said that the three had disappeared in the same week of June 2004.
Beyond their ages, little about the three as people has ever been made public, and their relatives have not spoken in the press. The only family voice is indirect: in July 2007 Christian Vanneste told the National Assembly that a victim's mother had said the authorities knew Bodein was dangerous. What the record does establish is that two of the three were minors under fifteen, which brought the case under the part of French law that allows the harshest penalty.
The courts treated the three deaths as connected. The investigating judges joined the three files, and concluded that Bodein was the principal perpetrator. In the case of Jeanne-Marie Kegelin they also found that he had acted with, or had been helped by, members of two families, which the European Court's judgment identifies only as the F. and R. families. In the cases of Hedwige Vallée and Julie Scharsch, Bodein was the only person charged. He was also charged with two attempted abductions of teenagers in June 2004.
Bodein was placed under formal detention on July 1, 2004. The Court's judgment treats that date as the start of the period counted toward his sentence, and the date from which the thirty-year review period runs. How the investigation first reached him has not been made public. Le JDD reported in September 2008 that genetic traces linked to the victims and belongings of the victims were found in his car, and that his genetic profile was found on an item belonging to one of the victims. AFP wrote in April 2008 that witness testimony was also part of the evidence. The avocat général at the appeal trial later said the blood traces and genetic profiles left no doubt.
Twenty-one people were charged in the Jeanne-Marie Kegelin case, according to the judgment. They included two minors, aged 15 and 16. Reuters, in its report on the appeal verdict, described the people involved as members of a family group that had briefly been suspected in the girl's disappearance.
On October 20, 2006, the investigating judge in Strasbourg issued an order of about four hundred pages sending Bodein to trial. The charges were aggravated murder, abduction, attempted abduction, unlawful confinement and recidivism, together with other offenses attached to them. Four co-accused were committed on the abduction, confinement and the murder of a minor under fifteen in the youngest victim's case, and the others faced charges of failing to help a person in danger and failing to report a crime. The investigating judge wrote that the genetic and other physical evidence contradicted Bodein's denials at every check.
On December 14, 2006, the investigation chamber of the Colmar court of appeal, in a decision of 312 pages, quashed the order for the four co-accused who had been committed on the most serious charges. For them the chamber ordered a "non-lieu", a ruling that there was no case to answer. It reclassified one count of unlawful confinement as complicity and otherwise upheld the order, including every charge against Bodein. The remaining co-accused, who faced the lesser charges, went to trial with him.
The trial opened before the Bas-Rhin assize court in April 2007; on July 17, 2007, a member of the National Assembly referred to Bodein's appearance "en avril dernier" before that court. AFP wrote in April 2008 that the hearing had lasted three months, and that because one of the sixteen co-accused had been a minor at the time of the events, the case was heard by the juvenile assize court of Bas-Rhin.
On July 11, 2007, the court gave its verdict. The European Court's judgment records the outcome in two parts. Bodein was sentenced to "réclusion criminelle à perpétuité", life imprisonment, and the court ruled that none of the measures listed in article 132-23 of the Penal Code could be granted to him. As to the others, the judgment says: "Elle prononça l'acquittement des autres co-accusés", the court acquitted the other co-defendants. Le JDD reported that they were cleared for lack of evidence, "faute de preuves", and that the prosecution did not appeal. The number of co-defendants is reported differently: AFP and Le JDD in September 2008 gave sixteen, and Reuters in October 2008 gave eighteen. These were acquittals, and none of the co-defendants was convicted at that trial.
The press described the sentence as the first of its kind. Vice wrote in November 2014 that Bodein was the first person sentenced to "perpétuité incompressible", the most severe penalty in the French Penal Code. In September 2008 Le JDD called the 2007 sentence the heaviest penalty French law allows and gave its terms as life imprisonment with thirty years incompressible.
French law distinguishes between life imprisonment as such and the period during which a prisoner cannot be released early. For ordinary life sentences, the judgment explains, the usual security period is eighteen years, which a court can extend to twenty-two. Under article 221-4 of the Penal Code the trial court can go further. Since a law of February 1, 1994, a court that sentences someone to life for the murder of a child under fifteen, committed with certain aggravating offenses listed in the statute, may rule that none of the adjustment measures of article 132-23 can ever be granted. That is the sentence known in the press as the "perpétuité réelle". A law of 2011 extended the same regime to the murder of certain public officials. The Constitutional Council upheld the 1994 regime in its decision no. 93-334 DC of January 20, 1994, and the 2011 extension in decision no. 2011-625 of March 10, 2011.
The ruling is not completely closed. Article 720-4 of the Code of Criminal Procedure lets the sentence-enforcement judge end the exclusion after thirty years of detention, on serious evidence of social rehabilitation. The decision requires an assessment of dangerousness by three medical experts, and a commission attached to the Court of Cassation then decides. Pre-trial detention counts toward the thirty years. For Bodein, held since July 1, 2004, the European Court worked out that he could apply for review in 2034, twenty-six years after the October 2, 2008 sentence. Born in 1947, he would be 87.
The case entered the legislative debate a few days after the first verdict. On July 17, 2007, the National Assembly opened its discussion of the government bill "renforçant la lutte contre la récidive des majeurs et des mineurs", the bill that introduced minimum sentences for repeat offenders. Rachida Dati, the Minister of Justice, answered the debate. Christian Vanneste, of the UMP group, cited Bodein as an example of the failures of the system. He described him as a repeat offender who had spent thirty-five years between prison and psychiatric hospital, said that he was released on conditional release in March 2004 and that "on connaît la suite, hélas", and argued that the roles of psychiatrists and psychologists in such decisions needed to be defined more clearly so that "catastrophes judiciaires" would not be repeated.
Bodein was named again in the Senate on January 30, 2008, during the discussion of the bill on security detention, "rétention de sûreté". Dati named Francis Heaulme and Pierre Bodein as examples of men who had been convicted of several serious crimes before the crimes that earned them life sentences, and against whom, she argued, the authorities could have acted earlier.
An earlier trace of the same discussion exists in the Assembly's written questions. On July 13, 2004, less than two weeks after Bodein was placed in detention, Didier Julia, a member of the Assembly, put a written question to the Minister of Justice that referred to Bodein's involvement in the murders of "trois jeunes femmes en Alsace". The minister's answer was published on October 18, 2005, with an erratum on November 29, 2005. It declined to comment on the pending case.
Bodein appealed. The appeal was heard by the Haut-Rhin assize court in Colmar, which sat from September 9 to October 2, 2008. AFP said in April 2008 that the appeal was expected to last about three weeks because the co-accused would not be tried again. Le JDD wrote on October 1, 2008, that the debates had begun the previous month with Bodein facing three murder charges, with two attempted abductions, and that he was 60.
The European Court's judgment gives figures for the hearing. The debates lasted twenty-four days, although the French Government had spoken of eighteen hearing days. The jury was asked twenty-seven questions. It answered yes, by a majority of at least ten votes, to most of them and no to several. Because the acquittals of the co-accused had become final, Bodein was the only defendant on appeal. The indictment set out the genetic evidence as establishing him as the principal perpetrator.
Bodein maintained his innocence. Reuters reported that he asked for an acquittal in a plea that lasted more than five hours, and Le JDD reported that he described himself as a "braqueur par nécessité", a robber out of necessity, rejected the label of a killer of children, and said he had found Christ in prison and had become "Pierrot le repenti". Before the appeal he had claimed a conspiracy, according to Le JDD: that justice had destroyed his alibis and planted genetic material in his car. His lawyer, Renaud Bettcher, did not argue insanity. According to Reuters, he challenged the genetic evidence and suggested that traces of the victims had been transferred onto Bodein's belongings. The wire report noted that no new witness or new evidence supported the theory. Bettcher also said that the evidence converged too neatly against his client.
The avocat général, Philippe Vannier, asked on October 1, 2008, for the maximum: life imprisonment with a thirty-year incompressible period, the same sentence as at first instance. Le JDD quoted him describing the blood traces and genetic profiles as leaving no doubt, rejecting Bodein's claim of manipulated evidence as "balivernes", and calling him fully responsible for his acts with a persistent dangerousness. Michel Patris, the psychiatrist who had met Bodein five times, described him as a psychopath, indifferent to the harm he caused, and not mentally ill. "He may do things that seem mad," Le JDD summarized, "but that does not make him mad."
On October 2, 2008, the court upheld the life sentence by a majority of at least ten votes. Its reasoning, as the European Court recorded it, relied on his legal recidivism since the 1996 conviction. By a special decision taken by absolute majority, it ruled again that none of the measures listed in article 132-23 of the Penal Code could be granted to him. Reuters, which reported the same day, said that Bodein announced he would appeal to the Court of Cassation. It also repeated that the earlier acquittal of the family members had not been challenged by the prosecution.
Bodein's appeal on points of law raised three arguments, as the European Court summarized them. He said the assize court's judgment gave no reasons, in breach of the right to a fair trial; he objected to the way the jury had been questioned on one point; and he argued that a life sentence with no possibility of adjustment was an inhuman and degrading penalty. On January 20, 2010, the Court of Cassation dismissed the appeal. On the last point it held that the sentence was not inhuman or degrading within the meaning of Article 3 of the Convention, because article 720-4 of the Code of Criminal Procedure allows the exclusion to be ended after thirty years. The decision made the conviction and the sentence final.
Bodein applied to the European Court of Human Rights on July 13, 2010. His complaints were that the assize court had not given sufficient reasons for its verdict, which he said breached Article 6 § 1, and that his sentence amounted to inhuman or degrading treatment, contrary to Article 3.
The Fifth Section, composed of seven judges, deliberated on October 7, 2014, and delivered its judgment on November 13, 2014. It found no violation of either article, unanimously. On the reasoning of the verdict, the Court held that Bodein had sufficient safeguards to understand why he was convicted. It pointed to the detailed indictment, the twenty-four days of debate and the twenty-seven questions put to the jury, and it noted approvingly that a law of August 10, 2011 now required a statement of reasons to accompany the jury's answers, which it said looked likely to reinforce the safeguards against arbitrary verdicts.
On the sentence, the Court applied the principle set in the Grand Chamber's 2013 judgment in Vinter and Others v. the United Kingdom, under which a life sentence must be reducible in law and in practice, with a prospect of release or review from the start. It found that the thirty-year review under article 720-4 was judicial, open to the prosecutor and the prisoner, based on an assessment of dangerousness by three medical experts, and aimed at an actual change of the prisoner's situation. It set aside the presidential pardon and medical suspension of sentence as insufficient on their own. In the Court's analysis the sentence "left no uncertainty" about a prospect of release, so it was reducible, and with the margin of appreciation the Court allows states in sentencing, there was no violation of Article 3.
Judge Angelika Nußberger wrote a separate opinion in which she concurred in the result. She noted that Bodein, born December 30, 1947, would be 87 when he first became eligible, and that a guarantee which exists in principle can become illusory in practice. She voted with her colleagues because he still had a real, if small, chance of reaching that age and because the possibility of humanitarian release or pardon left some hope of a return to liberty.
The judgment also gave national figures: sixteen life sentences were imposed in France in 2010, about 520 people were serving life sentences, and 56 life prisoners were granted conditional release between 2006 and 2012.
The European Court's judgment of November 2014 gives his place of detention as the prison in Moulins, in the Allier department, and records that he was on the register of "détenus particulièrement signalés", prisoners under heightened surveillance. The judgment and the concurring opinion put the first possible review in 2034, when he would be 87. No later ruling on his sentence has been reported.
Proven by final judgment: the three murders of June 2004, two of the victims being minors under fifteen, and two attempted abductions of teenagers. The case was decided by a jury at two trials and confirmed by the Court of Cassation. Bodein denied the killings and presented the evidence as the product of a conspiracy; no court accepted that account.
Not proven against anyone else: several other people, members of two families, were charged in connection with the youngest victim. Four were discharged by the Colmar investigation chamber in December 2006 and the others were acquitted in July 2007. The prosecution did not appeal. The investigating judges had found that in the first of the three cases he acted with, or was helped by, members of those families; after the discharges and acquittals, Bodein alone stood convicted.
Details that differ between accounts: the number of co-defendants tried in Strasbourg (sixteen in AFP and in Le JDD's September 2008 article, eighteen in Reuters' October 2008 report); the date on which the conditional release was granted (February 25, 2004, in the European Court's judgment; March 15, 2004, in the ministerial answer of October 2005, which agrees that he left prison on March 15); the year of his escape from the psychiatric hospital (1992 in Vice's English edition; the judgment gives only the 1996 sentence); and the date from which a review of the sentence may be sought (2034 in the judgment, which counts thirty years of detention from July 1, 2004; the judgment itself calls 2034 twenty-six years after the October 2, 2008 sentence).
December 30, 1947: Pierre Bodein is born.
1969: first conviction (Vice).
1976: examined by psychiatric experts; released in 1980 (Vice).
1989: arrested again after new violence (Vice).
November 15, 1990: begins the detention that led to his release in 2004 (Ministry of Justice answer, 2005).
February 9, 1996: sentenced to twenty years by the Bas-Rhin assize court.
February 25, 2004: conditional release granted (judgment of the European Court).
March 15, 2004: freed.
June 18 to 25, 2004: Jeanne-Marie Kegelin, Julie Scharsch and Hedwige Vallée are killed in the Barr and Obernai area.
July 1, 2004: Bodein is placed under formal detention.
July 13, 2004: written question in the National Assembly about the case.
October 20, 2006: the Strasbourg investigating judge orders him to trial.
December 14, 2006: the Colmar investigation chamber quashes the order for four co-accused and rules no case to answer.
April 2007: trial opens before the Bas-Rhin assize court.
July 11, 2007: life imprisonment with all sentence adjustment excluded; the other co-accused are acquitted.
July 17, 2007: Bodein is cited in the National Assembly debate on the recidivism bill.
January 30, 2008: the Minister of Justice names him in the Senate debate on security detention.
September 9 to October 2, 2008: appeal trial in Colmar; the sentence is upheld on October 2.
January 20, 2010: the Court of Cassation dismisses his appeal.
July 13, 2010: application lodged with the European Court of Human Rights.
November 13, 2014: the European Court finds no violation of Article 3 or Article 6.
2034: earliest year for a judicial review of the exclusion under article 720-4.