After a nearly 15-year legal fight, a retired Quebec judge who was facing a second murder trial in his wife’s 2009 shooting death has pleaded guilty to manslaughter.
Jacques Delisle appeared at the Quebec City courthouse Thursday to admit to one count of manslaughter. He walked in slowly, wearing a navy suit and a mask.
Delisle, 88, is believed to be the first Canadian judge to ever stand trial for murder. He was convicted in 2012 of fatally shooting his wife, Marie Nicole Rainville, and was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.
The former Quebec Court of Appeal judge maintained his innocence for years, saying Rainville took her own life while the Crown argued Delisle killed her.
A major part of the case revolved around the angle of entry of the bullet, which could confirm or infer a suicide. Questions surrounding the reliability of this forensic evidence led to a new trial being ordered in 2021.
Delisle’s initial appeal was dismissed in 2013, and the Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear his case. He spent nine years in prison.
But Delisle was freed in 2021 when David Lametti, the federal justice minister at the time, ordered a new trial after reviewing evidence that was not previously before the courts and concluded a miscarriage of justice had likely occurred.
In April 2022, Delisle’s lawyers then argued successfully that a retrial would be impossible because of the errors in the pathology report and unreasonable delays. But the Court of Appeal later reversed the Superior Court judge’s decision to grant a stay and paved the way for a new trial.
The Supreme Court of Canada was expected to decide on Thursday whether it would hear Delisle’s appeal of that last decision.
More to come.
— with files from Global’s Franca Mignacca and The Canadian Press
