Former Quebec judge Jacques Delisle dies at 89

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Former Quebec judge Jacques Delisle has died, the Court of Appeal of Quebec announced Monday. He was 89.

Delisle served as Superior Court judge beginning in 1983 and later as a Court of Appeal judge until 2009, when he was charged with the murder of his wife.

“Justice Delisle consistently championed the proper use of the French language in legal drafting,” the Court of Appeal’s announcement reads. “He was a renowned jurist, and the quality of his decisions attested to his genuine passion for the law.” 

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Delisle pleaded guilty to manslaughter this year while facing a second murder trial for the shooting death of his wife, Marie Nicole Rainville.

Delisle had been convicted in 2012 of fatally shooting Rainville and was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years. He spent nearly nine years behind bars before he was freed in 2021, when the federal justice minister ordered a new trial after reviewing evidence and concluding a miscarriage of justice had likely occurred.

Delisle’s lawyer had argued his client did not shoot Rainville, but caused her death by leaving a gun next to her, at her request, because she’d been struggling with debilitating effects of a stroke.

During Rainville’s autopsy, a pathologist failed to photograph the brain or take samples that would have shown traces of the bullet that killed her. Delisle’s lawyers argued this evidence would have allowed them to prove Rainville had died by suicide because of the trajectory of the bullet.

While Delisle originally told officers he had left the gun on a table and Rainville had found it, he admitted this year that Rainville had convinced him to load the weapon and bring it to her so she could end her life.

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Crown prosecutor François Godin said he did not agree with the defence’s version of events but supported the manslaughter plea, which would eliminate the need for a second murder trial. During the trial, the Crown argued that Delisle shot his wife to avoid a costly divorce and that he had wanted to move in with his former secretary, with whom he was having an affair.

Godin said in March he believed it would still have been possible to convict Delisle of murder in a second trial, but he also acknowledged the problems with the missing evidence that led a Quebec Superior Court judge to stay the case in 2022 after the new trial was ordered.

Quebec’s Court of Appeal reversed the stay, in a decision that paved the way for a second trial. The Supreme Court of Canada was asked to weigh in, but it removed the case from its schedule after the two parties agreed on a plea.

The ruling in March put an end to a legal process spanning more than 14 years with multiple appeals and reversals.

With files from The Canadian Press. 

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