French rock star gets eight years for killing

VILNIUS, Estonia (French Music Website) - A Lithuanian court sentenced French singer Bertrand Cantat to eight years in prison for fatally beating his actress girlfriend Marie Trintignant, in a case that has riveted France.

Cantat, the 40-year-old lead singer of the group Noir Desir, remained stone-faced as the three-judge panel found him guilty of causing the death of Trintignant, 41, during a fight in their Vilnius hotel room last July.

Trintignant died nearly a week later on August 1 of swelling to the brain. "According to the judges' opinion, the guilt of the accused is indisputable," the presiding judge said, noting that Cantat "did not want the consequences" of his acts. "A priori, obviously, we will appeal this decision," said Cantat's lawyer Olivier Metzner.
Prosecutors had asked the Vilnius court to send Cantat to prison for nine years, while his attorneys argued that the charges be reduced from murder to reckless manslaughter, which carried a lesser penalty.
Cantat testified that he had slapped Trintignant hard four times in the hotel room. An autopsy concluded that she died from the blows.
Prosecutor Vladimiras Serguejevas said Cantat was "fully aware of his actions, and he could not have been unaware of the gravity of the situation."

The trial ended last Monday with Cantat making a final emotional plea for forgiveness from Trintignant's family. "I know that I can do nothing. I know that I can only ask forgiveness as I have done since the beginning - to ask for forgiveness from the depths of my heart," he told the court.
Trintignant, the daughter of veteran French film star Jean-Louis Trintignant, had been in Vilnius to shoot a television movie about the French writer Colette, directed by her mother Nadine.

Nadine Trintignant, accompanied by her son Vincent and Roman Kolinka - one of Marie's four sons - left the courtroom in the Lithuanian capital without commenting to the press.