Sentenced to life imprisonment, the murderer Ugo Fredette will not have the right to a new trial. The Quebec Court of Appeal came to confirm his guilt on Friday by rejecting his appeal from the first degree murder verdicts of his wife Véronique Barbe and Yvon Lacasse.
Ugo Fredette murdered Véronique Barbe in a context of domestic violence and separation, on September 14, 2017. The murderer stabbed his wife 17 times, with 2 separate knives, while 2 children were in their residence in Saint-Eustache . He even locked the doors before fleeing with a 6-year-old.
An hour later, Ugo Fredette beat to death Yvon Lacasse, a 71-year-old Good Samaritan, at a rest area in Lachute to steal his vehicle. The murderer was eventually arrested the next day in Ontario, as he was wanted under the province’s longest-running AMBER scare at the time. A jury found him guilty in October 2019 at the Saint-Jérôme courthouse.
The only criticism raised by the defense in the context of the appeal concerned the unanimity required for each of the verdicts. In the case of the murder of Yvon Lacasse, for example, the jury had to unanimously conclude that the crime was premeditated or the child imprisoned, or both, in order to return a verdict of first degree murder.
Judge Myriam Lachance told jurors that they had to be unanimous on the murder verdict, but that they did not have to be unanimous on the underlying offense. In other words, eight jurors could be convinced of the premeditation of the crime and the four other jurors of the confinement of the child to arrive at a unanimous verdict.
The Court of Appeal, under the pen of Judge Patrick Healy, confirms this reasoning. “This approach assumes that the jury does not have to be unanimous on the alternative paths the law offers to arrive at a guilty verdict. […] The unanimity requirement does not apply in cases where the evidence reveals a functional equivalent of the facts or if the law recognizes a functional equivalent among the different elements of the offense, ”argues the highest court in the province.
Unless there is a final appeal to the Supreme Court, Ugo Fredette will have to serve at least 25 years in prison before being eligible for parole. The Crown still claims that this period be 50 years. The outcome of this appeal, however, depends on the Supreme Court’s decision next year in Alexandre Bissonnette’s case on the validity of consecutive sentences for murder.
Me Alexis Marcotte-Bélanger represented the prosecution before the Court of Appeal. He had teamed up with Me Steve Baribeau and Me Karine Dalphond at the trial. The appellant was represented by Me Philippe Comtois and Me Louis-Alexandre Martin.