Péchier Affair: 30 Patients Poisoned, 12 Dead, Serial Killer Doctor or Innocent?

The Doubs Assize Court, presided over by Delphine Thibierge, will examine for more than three months, until December 19, the charges against Frédéric Péchier, a renowned practitioner accused of knowingly poisoning 30 patients, aged between 4 and 89, 12 of whom died, between 2008 and 2017 in two private clinics in Besançon.

Placed under judicial supervision since the start of the case, the 53-year-old accused will appear free and faces life imprisonment.

“Without equivalent in the judicial annals”

This case is "without equivalent in French judicial annals," noted the Besançon prosecutor Etienne Manteaux, when he requested that the doctor be referred to the Assize Court, adding that the facts had "nothing to do with euthanasia."

"He is accused of poisoning healthy patients in order to harm colleagues with whom he was in conflict" and at the same time demonstrate his qualities as a resuscitator, according to the magistrate, who recently left for Grenoble.

Frédéric Péchier, for his part, has never wavered: "I am innocent of all the accusations against me," he declared to the press at the start of the affair in 2017.

This father of three children, "whose job is a passion, spends his life reviving people, not killing them," added his lawyer Randall Schwerdorffer.

The latter, along with Lee Takhedmit, has already announced that they will plead for acquittal.

30 patients suffered cardiac arrest

Investigations began in January 2017, following the suspected cardiac arrest of a 36-year-old woman during surgery at the Saint-Vincent Clinic. A potentially lethal dose of potassium was discovered in a bag of saline used for her anesthesia. Dr. Péchier was quickly suspected, arrested, and charged two months later.

The judicial police investigators then, during seven years of investigation, studied more than 70 serious adverse events (SAE), significant and unexpected problems occurring during medical procedures.

The cases of 30 patients who suffered cardiac arrest during surgery at the Saint-Vincent Clinic and the Franche-Comté Polyclinic were ultimately retained. Twelve did not survive despite resuscitation attempts.

Dr. Péchier is suspected of having contaminated the IV bags of these patients treated by his colleagues, to cause cardiac arrests, before often helping to resuscitate them.

For the prosecution, which will be led by Deputy Prosecutor Christine de Curraize and Honorary Prosecutor General Thérèse Brunisso, Frédéric Péchier is the "common denominator" between all the cases.

According to some expert reports, in the vast majority of cases there are "strong suspicions", in a few cases "certainties", that substances in sometimes lethal doses were administered to patients who came for surgery, often for minor procedures.

- "Combative" -

==============

The defense, on the other hand, disputes the reality of most of the poisonings, with Frédéric Péchier maintaining that the majority of the EIGs resulted from "medical errors" by his colleagues.

His lawyers denounce "an ideal culprit, created by the prosecution, but when you look at it point by point, it doesn't hold up and we will demonstrate this in court." Frédéric Péchier "is as combative as possible" and "he has the firm intention of demonstrating his innocence in this case," they assure AFP.

In total, more than 150 civil parties, including the anesthesiologists' union Snarf, will be represented at the trial. It's a "dizzying case" due to "its scale, duration, and technical complexity," emphasizes Frédéric Berna, one of the 55 victims' lawyers.

"These are purely gratuitous poisonings of victims who have nothing to do with him, who have never done anything," insists the lawyer. His clients "expect a lot from the judicial clarification of this case," he confides, skeptical of possible "sincere and loyal explanations from Dr. Péchier."