No one is above the law. A Crown prosecutor who fled police after causing an accident while intoxicated has a criminal record. Alice Bourbonnais-Rougeau had tried to assert her “privileged status” as a prosecutor.
After lengthy legal proceedings, Judge Gabriel Boutros of the Municipal Court of Montreal declared guilty last Friday Mr.e Alice Bourbonnais-Rougeau on two counts: hit and run and driving her vehicle while impaired by alcohol, April 24, 2021.
The prosecutor at the Bureau of Serious Crime at the Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions (DPCP) was sentenced to a conditional discharge for the hit and run and a fine of $1,000 for the other count. Thus, she will have to drag a criminal record for several years. He will also be banned from driving for a year.
The consequences of this conviction on his career at the DPCP are still unknown.
The 30-year-old lawyer was driving home that evening at the wheel of her vehicle. Unable to parallel park, even though there was ample space, Alice Bourbonnais-Rougeau suddenly accelerated, then crashed into the car of Anatoly Anisin, the key witness in the trial.
From the outset, Anatoly Anisin noticed the glazed eyes of the driver. Twice, Alice Bourbonnais-Rougeau told him that she wanted to “arrange” with him. She then tried to give him her prosecutor’s card, but the witness refused, preferring to call the emergency services. When he called 911, the driver started running to her house.
” [Elle] is a prosecutor. She must know that she is committing an offense by leaving the scene after the collision with Mr. Anisin’s vehicle. […] The Court does not see what reason she could have had for leaving the premises, apart from what is obvious in itself: she did not want to interact with the police, ”analyzes Judge Boutros.
According to another witness, Alice Bourbonnais-Rougeau had a “shaky” gait when moving. Half an hour after the accident, the police smelled a strong odor of alcohol emanating from the driver. In a discussion by a window, the accused also told the police that she was a Crown prosecutor and “knew the investigators she was going to call”.
“It is a privileged status that she is trying to use in order to place herself out of the reach of the agents”, had described the judge in a judgment on a preliminary request.
After fleeing the scene of the collision, Alice Bourbonnais-Rougeau barricaded herself in her home for five hours while waiting for the police to obtain a warrant to arrest her. The prosecutor tried unsuccessfully to argue that she was illegally detained at her home. According to the judge, it was she who was “the architect of her own misfortune”.
Me Denis Gallant and M.e Aline Ramy represented the Department of Penal and Criminal Prosecutions of the City of Montreal, while Me Marie-Pier Boulet defended the accused.