French Psychiatrist Sentenced After Patient Commits Murder

MARSEILLES, France (Reuters) - A French psychiatrist whose patient hacked an elderly man to death was found guilty of manslaughter on Tuesday in a groundbreaking case that could affect the way patients are treated.

A court in Marseilles said Daniele Canarelli, 58, had committed a "grave error" by failing to recognize the public danger posed by Joel Gaillard, her patient of four years.

Gaillard hacked to death 80-year-old Germain Trabuc with an axe in March 2004 in Gap, in the Alps region of southeastern France, 20 days after fleeing a consultation with Canarelli at Marseilles's Edouard Toulouse hospital.

Canarelli was handed a one-year prison sentence and ordered to pay 8,500 euros to the victim's children, in the first case of its kind in France. Defense lawyers said the ruling would have serious repercussions for treatment of the mentally ill.

"If a psychiatrist lives in fear of being sentenced, it will have very real consequences and probably lead to harsher treatment of patients," said Canarelli's lawyer, Sylvain Pontier.

The court said Canarelli should have requested Gaillard be placed in a specialized medical unit or referred him to another medical team, as one of her colleagues suggested. Her stubborn refusal had equated to a form of "blindness", the court president Fabrice Castoldi said.

Gaillard had already been forcibly committed to a secure hospital on several occasions for a series of increasingly dangerous incidents.

The victim's son, Michel Trabuc, said he hoped the case would set a legal precedent.

"There's no such thing as zero risk, but I hope this will move psychiatry forward and, above all, that it will never happen again," he said.

Gaillard was not held responsible for his actions and was freed under medical supervision.

Typical liberal mindset. The perpetrator is not responsible for his actions, but someone else is responsible for his behavior. When she gets out, she should kill the judge, the prosecutor and anyone else responsible for putting her in jail. It's not like she'll get the death penalty or anything. It's France.

Using their logic she shouldn't get any jail time. Nearly all mental health professionals are wackier than the people they're trying to treat.

Wow.....

Think before you all want to become Europe ,here's another one~
Italian Seismologists Charged With Manslaughter for Not Predicting 2009 Quake

Italian government officials have accused the country's top seismologist of manslaughter, after failing to predict a natural disaster that struck Italy in 2009, a massive devastating earthquake that killed 308 people

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/05/27/italian-scientist-charged-manslaughter-failing-predict-earthquake/#ixzz2FXcAvDbA