2006 – The Bar Mireille case, or the reversed verdict

During the night of Friday to Saturday 20 July 2006, the Bouches-du-Rhône Assize Court of Appeal acquitted four men from Toulon. They had been accused of forming the commando which, on 2 January 1999, opened fire on the manager and customers of the Bar Mireille in Toulon, killing two people and injuring three. Presiding judge Jean Filhouse, his two assessors and the 12 appeal jurors had to answer 155 questions, which explains the twelve and a half hours of deliberations.

Three of the accused had been found guilty of murder and attempted murder by the jurors of the Var Assize Court in January 2004. A fourth, Grégory Guttierez, 37, whom the police described as the driver of the car that carried the commando, saw his acquittal confirmed in Aix-en-Provence. Pierre Argenti, 53, had, by contrast, been sentenced to life imprisonment with a twenty-year minimum term. The same sentence had been handed down in Draguignan against Francis Discepolo, 45, while Stéphane Forschelet, 33, had been sentenced to thirty years’ imprisonment, two-thirds of it without parole. The four men had always denied being the perpetrators of the Bar Mireille killings, and they convinced the jurors at the end of a three-week trial during which more than eighty witnesses were heard.

Pierre Argenti, who was being tried only for the Bar Mireille killings, was expected to be released quickly. He had only the last few months left to serve of a seven-year sentence for criminal conspiracy to prepare an escape. The other defendants also faced a series of armed robberies and home invasions with false imprisonment. The jurors acquitted them of some charges; they handed down heavy sentences for these sometimes extremely violent attacks: thirty years’ imprisonment – the maximum sentence – for Francis Discepolo, eighteen years, two-thirds without parole, for Stéphane Forschelet, and twelve years for Grégory Guttierez. Found not guilty on one count, his sentence was reduced, since the jurors of the Var Assize Court had given him fourteen years.

The defence lawyers – Frédéric Monneret and Denis Fayolle for Argenti, Emmanuelle Istria for Discepolo, Philippe Vouland for Forschelet, Olivia Caselli and Erik Campana for Guttierez – all praised the outstanding competence of the lay jury. “Truly excellent jurors”, according to Olivia Caselli, who never stopped asking pertinent questions. “And not a single question off the mark,” added Philippe Vouland. According to those involved in the trial, this general acquittal can be explained by the poor quality of the police investigation and the shortcomings of the judicial investigation – witnesses not heard, telephone communications not checked. Far too many inaccuracies… Even the motive initially put forward was abandoned along the way by the prosecution. According to the investigators, the Bar Mireille killings were a reprisal against its manager Chaouki Boukoum – killed in the shooting – who had been putting obstacles in the way of the accused, who were keen to buy the Civette du Pont du Las.