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Fury in court as Attorney General summons dead wife as ‘witness’ to criminal proceedings
A French-Canadian man expressed anger at the Attorney General for summoning his dead wife as a witness in a case where stands charged with her involuntary death in a traffic accident in July last year.
19 September 2012, 12:00am
Karl Stagno-Navarra
Karl Stagno-Navarra
1 min read
The man is charged with the involuntary manslaughter of his wife.
Magistrate Edwina Grima has called on the Attorney General to correct what has been described as a "terrible mistake" of twice summoning a dead woman to the witness stand.
The woman was summoned for the second time to take the witness stand against her husband, Jean Guy Legendre, 67, from Quebec, Canada, who is accused of causing her involuntary death in a three-car collision on the outskirts of Mdina last year.
Legendre, a chairman of a company specialising in quality control, was on holiday in Malta with his wife, 63-year-old Renèe Pelland, and was driving down Triq l-Infetti, near Mdina.
The Chevrolet Kalos he was driving crashed into a BMW Z3 sports car, driven by 26-year-old Clayton James Fenech, who was also charged in court.
Defence lawyer Stefano Filletti who is appearing for Legendre said that he was outraged at the insensitivity of the Attorney General's Office, who not once but twice summoned his client's dead wife to the witness stand.
Legendre is currently on bail against a personal guarantee of €10,000 and a deposit of €2,000, provided that he lived at his son's house in St Julian's.
