In disagreement on the defense line, Mᵉ Antoine Vey, who had been appointed by the 32-year-old Chilean, accused of the assassination of his ex-girlfriend, Narumi Kurosaki, in Besançon in December 2016, had to throw sponge. Mᵉ Renaud Portejoie will succeed him.
by Pascale Robert-Diard (Vesoul (Haute-Saône) Special Envoy)
Barely opened on Tuesday, February 21, the trial of Nicolas Zepeda before the Haute-Saône Appeal Court in Vesoul was suspended. The president of the court read the letter addressed to him by the lawyer for the Chilean accused, M e Antoine Vey, indicating that he was no longer mandated by his client. Two lawyers were immediately committed, whose services were available by the accused, who announced, after a hearing suspension, the appointment of a new council, M e Renaud Portejoie. The latter, which is one of the multiple penalists consulted by Nicolas Zepeda since his conviction in April 2022 to 28 years in prison for the assassination of his ex-Japanese friend Narumi Kurosaki, in December 2016 in Besançon, asked two days delay to meet with his client. The trial will therefore resume Thursday, February 23.
“I was informed today [February 18] that my client, Nicolas Zepeda, no longer heard my representation mandate. In this context, for lack of mandate, I inform you that I will not be Present at the hearing Tuesday morning. In any event, in respect of professional secrecy, I tell you that the current situation will prevent me, in conscience, from ensuring its defense, “writes M Sup> vey.
Under the formulation, each word of which has been carefully weighed, reads all the stake of this appeal trial. What defense for Nicolas Zepeda? And above all, what freedom for the lawyer to choose the strategy he thinks the best in the face of the vertigo of the evidence gathered against the accused?
share of freedom
The same questions had haunted M e Jacqueline Laffont throughout the first instance trial which had proven to be particularly trying for her. Faced with the denial of his client, M e Laffont had advanced on a perilous thread, trying, after a week of debate, to open the door on confessions. In vain. The contradictory tensions between the mandate she had received – pleading doubt, and therefore the acquittal of the young Chilean – his conviction that, in the light of the hearing, this line of defense was no longer tenable and condemned his Customer to a maximum sentence, and finally respect for his reputation and his professional ethics, had led the lawyer to claim, in his argument, a part of freedom.
“I would have liked to be able to assist him with another defense than this,” she said in front of the courtyard and the jurors. Convening the memory of this audience day when she had tried to have Nicolas Zepeda recognized his responsibility in the death of Narumi Kurosaki, and the response drowned with sobs he had opposed to her – “I did not kill Narumi! ” -, M e laffont had observed, on the tip of the words:” This answer is sincere, either because he did not kill her, or because he cannot conceive that ‘He did it. The impossibility of admitting to ourselves that one killed, there is the part of humanity. “She could not go further.
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