He was one of the great French criminal lawyers. Me Jean-Louis Pelletier died at the age of 86, announces the president of the Association of Criminal Lawyers (Adap), of which he was one of the founders. Jean-Louis Pelletier had notably defended Francis Le Belge, Jacques Mesrine and even Redoine Faïd.
“ADAP salutes with great sadness the memory of one of its founders, Jean-Louis Pelletier. Huge penalist, lord of the assizes, he was of a generosity and a delicious approach for the young colleagues ”, writes the association on Twitter.
“Infinite sadness, the Criminal Bar has lost one of our greats, wrote Me Marie-Alix Canu-Bernard on Twitter. A mentor to many of us”. Jean-Louis Pelletier is said to have encouraged Éric Dupond-Moretti in his career as a lawyer.
“Jean-Louis Pelletier was one of the greatest. As a young lawyer, I had the immense honor of learning alongside him. His talent was matched only by his humanity, reacts the Minister of Justice. With his disappearance, a page in the history of lawyers is turned. I have a very moved thought for his loved ones. »
“My first boss Jean-Louis Pelletier. Beneath his fake grumpy air, he was incredibly human. I will always remember his advice when worried on the eve of pleading at the Assizes: You will plead standing in dress and in French… He was right ! I am sad…”, writes again the lawyer Pierre Hoffman.
“He who was screaming. I will never forget this scene”
In Aix-en-Provence where he started out, Me Jean-Louis Pelletier has twice had death sentences, one of which was inflicted in 1965 on an Italian worker for the murder of his former bosses. “As soon as the verdict was pronounced, they took him out of the box, dressed him in a homespun suit and put irons on his hands and feet, dragging him like an animal that would be taken to the slaughterhouse. . And him screaming. I will never forget this scene, ”he confided to Parisian in 2011.
A few months later, Jean-Louis Pelletier, then 25 years old, demanded his client’s pardon in front of General de Gaulle: “He gave me ten minutes, not one more. It was granted to him during the day. Another time, another grace for the lawyer: that of Philippe Maurice, sentenced for the murder of two police officers, decided by François Mitterrand four days after his inauguration.
The last pardoned, which earned Me Pelletier to receive insulting phone calls and miniature coffins, had spent his thesis in detention and became an emeritus researcher in medieval history. Released in 2001, had become a symbol of rehabilitation.