French president pardons French woman jailed after killing abusive husband

A Frenchwoman imprisoned for shooting dead
her husband after nearly 50 years years of rape
and incest has been granted a rare presidential
pardon by the French president.

Jacqueline Sauvage, 68, had become a symbol
of the scourge of domestic violence in France
and a cause célèbre, with almost 400,000
people signing a petition calling on François
Hollande to use his rarely used presidential
right of pardon.
Ms Sauvage was married for 47 years to
Norbert Marot, a violent alcoholic whom she
said raped and beat her and her three daughters
and also abused her son.
On September 10, 2012, the day after her son
hanged himself, Ms Sauvage shot her husband
three times in the back with a rifle.
She was found guilty of murder and sentenced
to 10 years in prison in October 2014, which
was upheld on appeal in December 2015 as the
state rejected her pleas of self-defence.
The Socialist leader agreed to meet her three
daughters and lawyers on Friday, and
afterwards said he needed "time to think" before
making the decision about the pardon.
On Sunday evening, his office said he had
granted the pardon and that Ms Sauvage could
immediately request her release.
“The president of the republic, faced with this
exceptional human situation, wants to enable
the return as soon as possible of Ms Sauvage
to her family,” it said in a statement.
During his 2012 presidential campaign, Mr
Hollande distanced himself from such pardons,
reinstated by Napoleon, describing them as
belonging to "a different concept of power".
He has granted only one to date, when he freed
convicted bank robber Philippe El Shennawy –
who had spent 38 years behind bars – in 2014.
When Ms Sauvage was sentenced, the activist
group Osez le Feminisme (Dare To Be Feminist)
called for the definition of self-defence to be
expanded in cases of "female victims of
violence".
Even Fleur Pellerin, Mr Hollande's culture
minister, said she was "overwhelmed" by the
testimonies of the daughters and said: "We are
in the presence of an exceptional case."



Source: The Telegraph