“As long as there is demand, you wash your hands of it”: four years in prison for a dealer from Alès with the air of “collateral damage”

Me Julie Peladan assure la défense de ce dealer domicilié dans le quartier des Cévennes. MIDI LIBRE – CHARLES LEDUC

Le prévenu, domicilié dans le quartier des Cévennes, est en état de récidive légale parce qu’il a précédemment été condamné pour viol, devant une cour d’assises.

“The case comes after a wave of arrests on December 16, on letters rogatory, in the Cévennes district” , explains Vincent Edel, who is presiding over the immediate appearance hearing on Thursday, December 19, at the Alès criminal court in Gard. On this morning of a major anti-drug operation, when the police were leaving the scene, an anonymous source told them that a resident of a building on the Impasse des Crêtes was in possession of drugs. They then entered an apartment on the 4th floor, arrested the man who lives there and got their hands on, mainly, half a kilo of cannabis, packaged in different forms and stored in various places.

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“Just enough time to turn around,” the dealer defends himself

Before his judges, this 43-year-old Alès resident, a repeat offender because among the 14 mentions on his criminal record is an eight-year prison sentence handed down by the Deux-Sèvres Assize Court in 2011, admitted the facts. He even explained that he had been operating since May, supplied himself in Marseille and had “15 to 20 buyers” in Alès. “Just enough time to turn around and set up a multi-service self-employed business”, continued this man who is now receiving RSA and is the father of a 5-year-old child. When the accused is questioned about the harm he causes to drug users, he responds to Quentin Larroque, the deputy public prosecutor, that he “doesn't force them”. “As long as there is a demand, you wash your hands of it…”, retorts the representative of the prosecution again.

A “fruitful”, “prolific” business

The public prosecutor continues. This resident of the Cévennes is considered to be “a small cannabis entrepreneur”, whose business is “fruitful”, “prolific”. By keeping an eye on the dealer's criminal record, he notes “a path full of fatality that leads him into delinquency”, emphasizing that the sentence handed down at the assizes, “is not nothing”. He is demanding, against this person who “does not intend to live the life of an honest man”, three years of imprisonment and continued detention.

“He made a bad choice to get out of it”, declares the defense

The defense attorney sees, there, “very severe demands”. But according to Me Julie Peladan,“we are on an artisanal traffic” to finance a daily consumption of ten joints. Her client would be “a free electron who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Collateral damage.” And to recall that the defendant, during the procedure, “was honest from start to finish. He confessed. He stands by his guns.” She hopes to obtain for this Cévenol, who “made a bad choice to get out of it”, a firm sentence with “a long suspended probation” by pleading that “a dry detention has no interest for him, nor for society”.

The seat is more severe than the prosecution

The court goes beyond the prosecution's indictment and sentences this forty-year-old to four years in prison, ordering continued detention. According to President Edel, the court has just taken into account two elements: “the facts are extremely serious” and the dealer is a repeat offender.

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