PUBLISHER'S NOTE: As France24 (Reporter Greg Sauvage) reports (link below) on June 23, 2021, this case has struck a very strong nerve in France..." A request for a retrial will be filed Thursday by the lawyers of a Moroccan-born gardener who was convicted for the 1991 murder of his wealthy boss in a case that shook France and resurfaced uncomfortable questions on justice, race and anti-immigrant bias. The Omar Raddad case has haunted the country's collective unconscious for 30 years despite a presidential pardon a quarter-century ago. It’s a murder mystery worthy of an Agatha Christie novel with a high-profile decades-long legal process that has been compared to the O.J. Simpson case in the United States. The filing of a formal request for a retrial is likely to reopen the old debates and divisions that were put on the back burner but which were never really erased from the French public consciousness."
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PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "In November 2015, four DNA prints corresponding to four unidentified men, two perfectly exploitable fingerprints and two others partially, had been found on two doors and a chevron which were at the scene of the crime. On these two doors had been written "Omar killed me" (sic) and "Omar was me", with the blood of the victim. Ghislaine Marchal, the wealthy widow of an automotive supplier, was 65 when she was found bathed in blood in the cellar of her property on June 23, 1991. The revision request is based on the subsequent analyzes of an expert, made in 2019 and unveiled on Monday by Le Monde . This report concludes with the presence of about thirty traces of a complete male DNA not belonging to the gardener and found in one of the inscriptions made with the blood of the victim which indicated Omar Raddad as the murderer."
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STORY: "A discovery of DNA traces, towards a review of the Omar Raddad trial?" original published by L'Independant (staff reporters) on June 22, 2021. (Google translation. Thank you Google! HL);
GIST: "Sentenced in 1994 and then partially pardoned in 1998 by Jacques Chirac Omar Raddad, who has always shouted his innocence, now says he can prove it.
The lawyers of Omar Raddad, convicted in 1994 for the murder of Ghislaine Marchal in 1991 in Mougins, to 18 years of imprisonment, without the possibility of appealing at the time, will file a new request for review on Thursday, reports BFMTV .
On the basis of new analyzes of traces of DNA discovered in 2015, the defenders of the Moroccan gardener who has spent a total of more than seven years in prison, want to definitively prove the innocence of their client.
In November 2015, four DNA prints corresponding to four unidentified men, two perfectly exploitable fingerprints and two others partially, had been found on two doors and a chevron which were at the scene of the crime.
On these two doors had been written "Omar killed me" (sic) and "Omar was me", with the blood of the victim.
Ghislaine Marchal, the wealthy widow of an automotive supplier, was 65 when she was found bathed in blood in the cellar of her property on June 23, 1991.
The revision request is based on the subsequent analyzes of an expert, made in 2019 and unveiled on Monday by Le Monde .
This report concludes with the presence of about thirty traces of a complete male DNA not belonging to the gardener and found in one of the inscriptions made with the blood of the victim which indicated Omar Raddad as the murderer.
Omar Raddad had benefited from a partial pardon from President Jacques Chirac and a conditional release in 1998 but this pardon does not constitute an annulment of the conviction and does not make him innocent.
Th entire story can be read at:
https://deathpenaltynews.blogspot.com/2021/06/france-apres-la-decouverte-de-traces.html
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
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FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they’ve exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
