Was the move premeditated? This was one of the main questions that arose this Wednesday at the Tarn Assize Court. Luca Mariani, ex-hope of the rugby club Castres Olympique (Tarn), was sentenced to 10 years in prison for setting a trap and beating his rival, against a backdrop of romantic jealousy.
On the night of May 16 to 17, 2019 in Albi, the rugby player had ambushed a young man who had visited his girlfriend. Pretending to be her, he had made an appointment with her in the night and had hit her on the back of the head with a bottle of vodka and then beaten her up before fleeing, after the intervention of passers-by. Seriously injured, the victim remained five days in a coma.
A sentence ” commensurate with the violence of this attack “
Aged 22 today, the young man still suffers from neurological sequelae: memory loss, speech difficulties, and has been recognized as 25% disabled. The 23-year-old accused admitted the charges and apologized during the trial several times, in tears. But he always refuted homicidal intent and premeditation.
The general counsel, Sarah Gonzalvez, had estimated that the act was premeditated and had requested against him 10 to 12 years of criminal imprisonment. The verdict, which does not retain premeditation, is “a satisfaction” in this sense, rejoiced Laurent Boguet, one of Luca Mariani’s lawyers. “As he had maintained for many years, he never subscribed to an approach that lived to prepare for the killing of the victim,” he reaffirms. The sentence is “commensurate with the violence of this attack and somewhat tempered by the young age of the accused”, comments Alexandre Martin, one of the victim’s lawyers.