Murder of Nicole Rainville: ex-judge Jacques Delisle to plead guilty
Posted March 13, 2024 12:40 pm.
Last Updated March 13, 2024 1:54 pm.
Crown prosecutor François Godin announced Wednesday that former judge Jacques Delisle, accused of murdering his wife in 2009, will plead guilty Thursday at the Quebec courthouse.
However, it’s not known to which charge he will plead guilty.
More than 15 years of proclaiming his innocence
Delisle, a former judge at the Quebec Court of Appeal, was found guilty of premeditated murder of his partner Nicole Rainville by a jury on June 14, 2012, but he has always said that she committed suicide.
The verdict was largely based on the testimony of a pathologist who claimed the trajectory of the bullet in the victim’s brain made it difficult to support the suicide theory.
He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for 25 years.
The former judge went to the Supreme Court to try to appeal this verdict but was rejected in December 2013.
Delisle did not give up, requesting a review in 2015 from the federal minister of justice, who then entrusted the file to the Criminal Conviction Review Group (CCRG).
The report was based on the analysis of five pathologists and four ballistics experts.
They concluded the autopsy report was deficient and criticized the loss of evidence because the victim’s brain, cuts and the photographic documentation had not been preserved.
In April 2021, the former federal Minister of Justice David Lametti reviewed the evidence that had not been submitted in court at the time of the trial or appeal and ordered a new trial.
Lametti concluded that a miscarriage of justice had probably occurred in this case.
A new trial never took place
In Superior Court, Delisle’s lawyers successfully argued that a new trial would be impossible because a Crown expert had made serious errors in the pathology report.
They also argued there had been unreasonable delays throughout the trial.
In September 2023, the Court of Appeal overturned the stay of proceedings pronounced in April and returned the case to the Superior Court.
It was expected that Delisle would undergo a new trial.
—This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews.
