The jury in the trial of Marie-Josée Viau and Guy Dion delivered its verdict on Sunday evening. Dion, acquitted; Viau, doomed. But Justice comes out of this sinister play with a black eye.
Let us recall the facts. The couple were accused of the premeditated murder of two bandits in June 2016. Brothers Vincenzo and Giuseppe Falduto had been killed by a contract killer on their property.
The hitman later decided to unpack his bag to the police. He trapped his accomplices Viau and Dion by recording them without their knowledge, years later.
The trial lasted five months. The jury heard the chilling audio tapes of the couple recalling details of the murders with the hitman. The latter also testified at the trial.
The couple, him, denied in court his participation. He pleaded not knowing that a double murder was going to take place on his property. He explained that he collaborated with the mafia after the fact to save his skin.
He denied having participated in the plot to murder the two Falduto brothers. He denied having burned the bodies of the Falduto brothers, having disposed of the ashes in a river.
The jury returned its verdict after nine days of deliberation, isolated from the rest of society.
Guy Dion: acquitted.
Marie-Josée Viau: guilty of conspiracy and second degree murder.
Small problem here: what Guy Dion and Marie-Josée Viau firmly denied in court, they had confessed to investigators after their arrest!
But Judge Éric Downs excluded these confessions because investigators from the Sûreté du Québec “subtly” denied the constitutional rights of the accused, namely their right to silence and rapid recourse to a lawyer.
This is not trivial: the right to silence and the use of a lawyer for citizens accused of a crime, it is a little, a lot, what distinguishes a rule of law from a dictatorship.
That SQ organized crime investigators trampled on these constitutional rights is truly mind-boggling. Police officers have known for decades that the courts have no humor in this matter. Elite investigators who trample on these rights are acting like amateurs.
The rest is staggering: the trial went ahead, without the confessions of Marie-Josée Viau and Guy Dion.
Results ?
The trial was a farce where all the participants knew they were performing in a summer play: the defense attorneys, the crown attorneys and the judge himself knew full well that the defendants were swearing in court. quite the opposite of what they confessed to the police.
Did I say that everyone in the trial knew they were participating in a play?
Sorry, this is incorrect: the citizens of the jury who put their lives on Pause for five months, they ignored it!
As the confessions of the Viau-Dion couple were excluded, the jurors took part in this summer play in the role of the cuckolded husband. By God, my husband ! These poor jurors listened to defendants who, under oath, told them the complete opposite of what they had confessed to investigators.
In this mess, the SQ investigators are primarily responsible. If they had respected the constitutional rights of the accused, this bad play would never have happened.
But Justice itself has to examine its conscience. Why allow such a stupid dinner where everyone in the room knows that the accused are swearing the opposite of what they confessed?
I think I am the proverbial “reasonable person” that judges refer to when justifying some of their decisions. For example, when judges say that a “reasonable person” could lose confidence in the administration of justice if such and such a decision were taken in the context of a trial …
I think I am that reasonable person: I don’t want all the accused to be hanged by the balls, I want the rule of law to be respected, I want the Crown to play fair with the defense and for the police to get their evidence. legitimate way.
And, yes, let the culprits escape rather than condemn the innocent.
It is this reasonable person who, today, finds that the jury in the Viau-Dion trial was cuckolded. I would have preferred a stay of proceedings to this charade.
Judges regularly gargle with the concept of “confidence in the administration of justice”, it is very important to them. They often come back to it: above all, “the reasonable person” should not lose confidence in the administration of justice, well, God forbid…
If the judges think that the Viau-Dion trial does not damage the public’s confidence in the administration of justice, I think they have a funny idea of the public.
SPEAKING CONFIDENCE –
We will talk again about the many blunders of the Sûreté du Québec in the fight against organized crime in recent years. For the space of this chronicle, the simulacrum of justice that was the Viau-Dion trial is enough, the court (oops!) Is full.