The lawyer was convicted at first instance for fleeing after hitting and injuring a pedestrian driving his SUV in December 2019 in Brittany.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Parisian lawyer, Mathieu Davy, was sentenced on Monday January 24 to eight months in prison suspended in Lorient for fleeing after hitting and injuring a pedestrian on a protected passage in December 2019. The court Correctional Lorient (Morbihan) also pronounced the cancellation of his driving license with a ban on ironing it for six months, and ordered him to pay 1,600 euros in damages to the victim. At the end of the hearing, Mathieu Davy announced his intention to appeal.
Facial head trauma
At the wheel of his SUV, the 43-year-old lawyer, who lives between Paris and Brittany, had hit a 53-year-old merchant navy captain on the evening of June 16, 2019 in Plouhinec (Morbihan). Victim of a facial cranial trauma, the pedestrian suffers from an alteration of his cognitive abilities. During the hearing on January 3, Me Davy admitted to having “underestimated the violence of the shock”. “I should have stopped,” he said at the helm.
“If there is a shock, the only thing to do for any citizen, and even more so for a legal professional, is to stop,” insisted the deputy public prosecutor. The lawyer, who only had one point left on his driving license on the day of the accident, already had four convictions related to traffic offenses, including one, in 2003, with a hit and run.
Impairment of discernment invoked
“This questions your relationship to driving and the law,” noted the president of the court. “Yes, it overwhelms me,” admitted the defendant. The defendant’s lawyer from Lorient pleaded for release for the injuries caused. On the strength of a psychiatric report, he invoked his colleague’s impaired judgment to justify the hit-and-run. “He had fled because he had sensed an immediate danger. He had returned home to put himself under protection,” he pleaded. Without success. The lawyer announced that he will appeal the decision.
