{"id":520673,"date":"2026-06-27T04:47:21","date_gmt":"2026-06-27T04:47:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/520673\/"},"modified":"2026-06-27T04:47:21","modified_gmt":"2026-06-27T04:47:21","slug":"toscan-du-plantier-family-lawyer-dismisses-call-to-overturn-bailey-murder-conviction-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/520673\/","title":{"rendered":"Toscan du Plantier family lawyer dismisses call to overturn Bailey murder conviction \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A lawyer for the family of murdered French<\/a> film producer Sophie Toscan du Plantier<\/a> has dismissed calls by a former Irish public prosecutor<\/a> for the French authorities to overturn the conviction in France of chief suspect Ian Bailey<\/a> for the killing.<\/p>\n

Alain Spilliaert said that he didn\u2019t wish to engage in \u201ca polemic\u201d with Robert Sheehan, a former solicitor at the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), but it was simply not possible for the French ministry of justice to overturn Bailey\u2019s 2019 conviction for the voluntary homicide of Toscan du Plantier.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe criminal court of Paris is independent and the ministry of justice in France has no power to request such a court to reopen a case \u2013 that is simply a matter of legal fact,\u201d said Spilliaert, a veteran of the Paris Bar since 1983, who has represented the victim\u2019s family for almost 30 years.<\/p>\n

Spilliaert was commenting after it emerged that Sheehan, the DPP solicitor who directed in 2001 that Bailey should not be prosecuted, had written to the French ministry of justice seeking to get Bailey\u2019s French conviction in absentia overturned.<\/p>\n

Sheehan told The Irish Times that if Garda efforts to link Bailey to the murder scene using US specialist DNA-collection firm M-Vac Systems had failed to find any such evidence after almost a year, then it was reasonable to assume there was no such evidence and Bailey was innocent.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe late Sophie Toscan du Plantier, who was found murdered in west Cork in 1996 <\/p>\n

He pointed out in his letter to the French authorities that the original Garda inquiry noted Bailey had scratches on his hands and arms, and that the fatal attack on Toscan du Plantier happened in a briar-strewn area at her holiday home near Schull in west Cork in December 1996, but that no \u201cblood, skin, clothing, fibres or hair\u201d were found.<\/p>\n

But Spilliaert said Sheehan was basing his argument on assumptions, including that \u201cthe absence of Bailey\u2019s DNA at the scene is still not proof of his innocence\u201d.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Former DPP solicitor asks French authorities to overturn Ian Bailey conviction for Sophie Toscan du Plantier murderOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Spilliaert said he knew from reading about the M-Vac evidence-harvesting system in the United States that it can take years for the process to yield results, and he believed it would be better to let the Garda serious crime review team do their work rather than jump to conclusions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A lawyer for the family of murdered French film producer Sophie Toscan du Plantier has dismissed calls by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":520674,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[16186,1814,1346,7114,61,60,43,618,620],"class_list":["post-520673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-director-of-public-prosecutions","tag-france","tag-garda-siochana","tag-ian-bailey","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-sophie-toscan-du-plantier","tag-west-cork"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=520673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520673\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/520674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=520673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=520673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=520673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}