Posted on 10/19/2005 10:32:31 AM PDT by bizzyblog
Couple poisoned children to escape debts
BEAUVAIS, France, Oct 18 (AFP) - A French married couple poisoned their five children in a desperate bid to escape spiralling consumer debt but only their 11 year-old daughter succumbed to the injection of insulin, a court was told Tuesday.
Emmanuel and Patricia Cartier, aged 37 and 44, accumulated EUR 230,000 euros of debt divided between more than 20 bank and loan accounts, and when they could no longer meet repayments resolved to take the family "to a better place", the court heard.
However the murder-and-suicide pact went wrong on August 19, 2002, when four of the children survived the insulin dose and Emmanuel proved unable to slash his own wrists -- administering only a superficial scratch.
The pair face life imprisonment if they are convicted of premeditated poisoning in a verdict due on Wednesday.
Lawyers called for a lighter sentence, however, arguing that the Cartiers were the victims of a materialist society that equates success with the constant amassing of possessions.
"They were brought down by the fatal logic of debt and the poisonous charm of revolving credit. They have their share of responsibility in the affair, but for them alone to bear the blame would be deeply unjust," said lawyer Hubert Delarue.
The court heard how Emmanuel and Patricia, who had poorly paid jobs as a machine-operator and a care-worker, spent heedlessly on electric goods, clothes and presents for the children -- juggling the debt via a succession of credit companies.
"I had no limit. If any of the children wanted something, I had to give it. And then to be fair, I had to give it to the others too," Emmanuel told the court at Beauvais, 100km northwest of Paris.
(Excerpt) Read more at expatica.com ...
Death Pact Couple Tried to Poison Their Five Children-- UK Telegraph
Yes, This Story Is Real (French Couple Attempts Murder-Suicide of Entire Family Over Debt; One Child Dead)--BizzyBlog
Be sure to read the whole thing and the additional info in the UK Telegraph.
The couple should be locked up forever, but to what extent do lenders who surely are aware of their overextended situation bear moral (not legal) responsibility for lending to people with inadequate means?
No death penalty in France, but it's the fault of American Express anyway.
If they felt any responsibility to facilitate people's self indullgent whims, they'd be giving the the money away, not lending it. These people did this to themselves.
Well, their lawyer can try the spin about it "not being completely their fault, because of revolving credit".
I expect, though, that the French judges will ignore those arguments and give the parents who murdered one child and tried to murder four more a sentence of firm prison in perpetuity.
They bear no moral responsiblity.
This HAS to be a joke, right? It just sounds too much like something a resident freeper francophobe would invent!
"They were brought down by the fatal logic of debt and the poisonous charm of revolving credit. They have their share of responsibility in the affair, but for them alone to bear the blame would be deeply unjust," said lawyer Hubert Delarue.
I guess I don't begrudge the defendants or their lawyers for making this argument. They should argue whatever gets their client off. But it's beyond me how a judge could consider this an exculpatory situation, and the lawyers would not be arguing it if it weren't for the fact that the judges are willing to accept this BS. The courts have completely gone bezerk, everywhere in the world.
"The couple should be locked up forever, but to what extent do lenders who surely are aware of their overextended situation bear moral (not legal) responsibility for lending to people with inadequate means?"
The answer to that depends on your religious tradition.
In the Catholic tradition, to knowingly dangle a temptation before a person who has a known weakness for that temptation is to do evil.
The lawyers will argue it, but the French courts are not going to give it any space.
Basically, the lawyers here have NOTHING.
There's a mother and father who murdered a child and tried to murder the rest, but who inflicted extremely superficial wounds on themselves.
What defense is there, other than to try and throw themselves on the mercy of the court?
That's all the lawyer is doing. He's trying to find SOMETHING on which to gain a wee bit of sympathy.
It ain't going to work.
French courts are actually not berzerk. French people are not nearly as dissatisfied with their system of justice as Americans are, because the French system just doesn't produce the wild results that happen in America.
None whatsoever.
A normal person responds to unserviceable debt by seeking bankruptcy, not by murdering their family.
No lender is morally culpable for someone attempting to commit suicide. Suicide is an irrational response to heavy debt.
It "went wrong" when 4 children survived?!?!?
I agree.
The lender wouldn't be culpable for murder and mayhem (well, unless the lender was a loanshark who used thugs to collect debts).
The lender would bear moral responsibility for bankruptcies and severe economic hardships.
I don't think that's limited to Catholicism.
It was easy to murder one of his children and attempt to murder the others, but it wasn't quite so easy to damage his own miserable hide.
Yes, that's where I was trying to go. OF COURSE they're not in any way legally or morally culpable for the murder. But IMHO individual lenders who approved the later-stage loans are morally culpable for sending this couple over the edge into what should have been a bankruptcy instead of a murder, if they knew, as they must have, that this couple was ridiculously over the edge and could not possibly repay.
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