A nursery assistant capable of concocting a lie during the agony of a baby, to whom she has just given toilet unclogger to drink, is not credible when she says "I didn't mean to kill," the civil parties argued Friday at Myriam Jaouen's appeal trial.

The accused, sitting in the dock of the Ain Assize Court, "under medication and appearing haggard and frightened, is not the Myriam Jaouen of June 22, 2022," stressed the lawyer for the association l'Enfant Bleu - Enfance maltraitée, Sidonie Leblanc.

On that day, the young woman, then 27 years old, poured a "massive" dose of a cleaning product into the mouth of little Lisa, 11 months old, who had just been dropped off by her father at the Danton Rêve micro-nursery, part of the People and Baby group, in Lyon.

"A woman who, according to her own account, is capable of firmly holding a baby, shoving the neck of a bottle of acid into its mouth, holding it there and saying to it: 'take this, eat and shut up!', cannot be excused," said Me Leblanc.

Moreover, she had immediately searched on Google for "what to do when a child has eaten a toilet plunger", and she cleaned up the vomit on the floor, changed the girl's clothes and ran the washing machine.

When other parents arrived, Myriam Jaouen also concocted a "structured lie": a tube of gouache paint exploded and the spray hit Lisa's mouth. She then smeared some on her pants to bolster this version of events.

A lie that she repeated in an almost calm, determined voice three hours later to the doctor at the poison control center - whose recording was broadcast in court - who called her to understand why gouache would cause such burns.

"Don't tell us she's incapable of developing a case," the lawyer concluded.

- "For what" -

Before her closing argument, several psychiatric experts described the defendant as "immature" and "moderately" intellectually disabled. But "without a proven mental illness," therefore not suffering from "a complete or impaired capacity."

"There is therefore full criminal responsibility" in his act, asserted Attorney General Baptiste Godreau.

In April, during the initial trial before the Lyon Assize Court, this magistrate had requested 30 years in prison, but the jurors sentenced Myriam Jaouen to 25 years, abandoning the charge of murder and therefore the intent to kill.

Because the accused has always maintained that she was unaware of the dangers of the drain cleaner-type product administered to Lisa. "I did it to silence her, but not to kill her," she reiterated on Thursday.

At the parents' request, the prosecution appealed the verdict and Myriam Jaouen has been on trial since Wednesday in Bourg-en-Bresse for aggravated murder and faces life imprisonment.

The family's lawyer asked the jurors to be more severe than in the first instance: "Twenty-five years in prison would have been to say to Myrima Jaouen: you did not intend to kill Lisa, your version has convinced us," argued Catherine Bourgade.

"It is not possible to hear this, neither for her parents nor for Lisa: you will have to convince yourselves, in order to do her justice, that yes there was an intention to kill," that "it is not enough for an accused person to say: 'I didn't want to kill' for us to believe him," she insisted.

With a CAP in early childhood education, which teaches the dangers of household products for children, the accused cannot say that she "did not know".

"Of course, the question of why will remain. But Lisa's parents will never have an answer, even after your judgment, because such an act is incomprehensible," the lawyer concluded.