French woman who burned grandfather alive as ‘an act of love’ granted reduced prison sentence

A French court on Wednesday handed a five-year jail term to a woman who burned her bedridden grandfather alive by setting his mattress on fire. The prosecutors had appealed a previous sentence saying that they found it ‘too lenient’.

In October last year, Emilie G, 33, was given a five-year suspended sentence after she admitted to killing her grandfather, describing it as “an act of love” to end his suffering.

Later, Prosecutors appealed the ruling, saying she killed the 95-year-old as frustrations piled up in her personal life. They demanded a 15-year jail term for the woman.

However, the court in the eastern town of Bourg-en-Bresse stopped short on Wednesday, sentencing her to five years in prison, with four years suspended. The remaining year will be served under house arrest with an electronic tag rather than in prison.

During the trial, Eric Mazaud – the prosecutor – argued that killing her grandfather was “not an act of love”.

“When you love someone, you don’t burn them,” he said at the court.

The victim was found dead from severe burns and smoke inhalation in his bed in August 2020.

His granddaughter expressed regret during the appeal hearings which opened on Monday but was unable to explain why she chose to burn him alive.

“He did not have a death worthy of his life… fire is atrocious, it is inhuman,” she said on Tuesday.

During the first trial, Emilie G., who experts said suffered from depression, said she was overwhelmed by caring for her grandfather while raising her children and dealing with a faltering romantic relationship.

On the day her partner revealed he had been unfaithful, she poured gasoline on her grandfather’s mattress and threw a burning sheet of paper on the bed before fleeing the room.

Prosecutor Romain Ducrocq during the first trial argued that Emilie G. killed her grandfather to “exorcise her frustration and multiple failures”.

But the defendant said that she acted to end her grandfather’s suffering, someone she had cared for and viewed as a father figure.

She insisted her grandfather had asked her to kill him several times, including in the month before his death, after she found him lying in his own excrement. She said she did not tell other family members.

The court said it acknowledged the man’s “weariness”, but concluded that at no point “did he express an explicit request for active assistance in dying”.

The presiding judge, Raphael Vincent, said he considered the “extremely serious” acts to be “in no way a reasoned act of euthanasia”.

According to a psychiatric report, she was in a “dissociative state” at the time, which was said to “impair her judgement”.