Prosecutors seek 25 years for Nicolas Ullens, defence asks for suspended five-year term

Hearings resume in Nivelles

The sentencing phase of the trial of Nicolas Ullens, 61, resumed on Wednesday morning, 4 November 2026, before the assize court of Walloon Brabant in Nivelles. The hearings had been suspended for almost a month after the defence asked for the removal of the presiding judge, Pierre Delcour, and his two assessors. Ullens was found guilty on 6 October of murdering his stepmother, Myriam Lechien, 70, who was shot six times on 29 March 2023 at a country house in Ohain, a section of the municipality of Lasne. The defence had objected to the judges taking part in the jury's deliberation on premeditation, a question the jurors had decided by seven votes to five. The Court of Cassation rejected the removal request on 21 October, which let the trial continue before the same judges. The court, made up of three magistrates and twelve jurors, will withdraw to deliberate once the speeches on sentence are finished.

Premeditation at the heart of the case

Ullens has admitted shooting his stepmother but has disputed that the killing was planned, and premeditation was the central question of the trial. The defence argued for murder without premeditation, while prosecutors and the civil parties argued for assassination, the charge that covers premeditated killing. The jury found premeditation, and the accused has said by his own account that he acted on impulse in an outburst of violence after years of frustration. He presented himself to police shortly after the shooting. Before trial he spent seven months in pre-trial detention at Nivelles prison, from the day of the shooting until October 2023, followed by two and a half years under electronic monitoring.

Prosecution seeks 25 years

Advocate general Laure Wynants asked the jury on Wednesday morning for 25 years in prison. Addressing the jurors, she recalled that they had found the killing premeditated, meaning the accused had weighed his act before carrying it out. She said the jurors had also excluded any claim that he had lost all self-control, and that he had deprived his stepmother of any chance of survival. Wynants cited several factors in the accused's favour: a clean criminal record, his spontaneous surrender to police, his age, and psychiatric experts who rate the risk of a new offence as low. She said his expressed regrets had to be weighed with caution, since they seemed to concern the act more than his full criminal responsibility and its consequences. Concluding her request, she said:

“It is a matter of pronouncing a sentence of justice.”

She added that the request was driven by neither anger nor a desire for revenge.

Defence seeks a suspended sentence

Quentin Mayence, who had not yet addressed the court during the trial, spoke to the jurors for about an hour and a half. He asked for five years with a probation suspension, the longest suspension Belgian law allows, and argued that the emotional context of the case was the decisive circumstance. He said that if no suspension were granted, whatever the sentence, Ullens would have to return to prison, and that he would have asked for ten or fifteen years with suspension had the law allowed it. He told the jurors:

“I have no other option but to avoid sending him to prison.”

He closed his plea by arguing that society as a whole had nothing to gain from returning Ullens to prison.

Prosecution: imprisonment25

Defence: suspended term with probation5

Prosecution: imprisonment

25 years

Defence: suspended term with probation

5 years

Data from the article text

What comes next

Ullens will be able to speak one last time before the court withdraws. Murder carries life imprisonment under Belgian law, but the court and jurors may recognise mitigating circumstances and impose a lighter sentence. Some of the twelve jurors may need to be replaced by alternates if they cannot return after the weeks-long break. The sentence had not been pronounced when the articles were published, and it could come later on Wednesday, 4 November.