Life imprisonment for the French anesthesiologist accused of murdering 12 patients

BarcelonaFrench anesthesiologist Frédéric Péchier, accused of poisoning 30 patients between 2008 and 2017, 12 of whom died, was sentenced to life imprisonment on Thursday. He will have to serve a minimum of 22 years in prison, the maximum sentence he faced. The court, composed of six members of a jury and three professional judges, rejected Péchier's three-month-long plea of innocence, based on the lack of direct evidence. The prosecution maintained that the anesthesiologist was the only one who could have committed these crimes, carried out in two private clinics in the town of Besançon, and that he did so out of malice toward some fellow doctors on whom he wanted to take revenge. The defense lawyers have already expressed their intention to appeal the sentence. However, this appeal will not prevent Péchier from going to prison. "I have been fighting for eight years against those who accuse me of being a poisoner," the anesthesiologist said in his latest statement on Monday. "I took an oath in 1999 and I have always respected it," he stated, referring to the Hippocratic Oath with which doctors ethically commit themselves to the profession at the beginning of their careers.

Wearing down doctors

The prosecution had described Péchier, 53, as a "serial killer" and a "doctor of death" who injected potassium and other substances into patients to induce cardiac arrest, aiming to psychologically wear down the doctors with whom he was in conflict. Although no formal evidence of his actions has been found, investigators consider the anesthesiologist to be the only common link between all the deaths.