The legal saga of former judge Jacques Delisle should end this week, almost 15 years after the death of Nicole Rainville. The former magistrate accused of murdering his wife will plead guilty Thursday at the Quebec courthouse.
“He will plead guilty tomorrow [jeudi] », confirmed to The Press Crown prosecutor Me François Godin. The prosecutor had just made the announcement during a brief hearing. The charge to which the 88-year-old man plans to plead guilty has not been revealed.
Coincidence or not, it was also Thursday morning that the Supreme Court of Canada was to announce whether it agreed to hear Jacques Delisle’s final appeal to cancel the holding of a second trial.
The Delisle affair has experienced multiple twists and turns since the death of Nicole Rainville in November 2009. Former judge of the Quebec Court of Appeal, Jacques Delisle was found guilty in 2012 by a jury of the premeditated murder of his wife. He did not testify in his defense.
At the time, Nicole Rainville was paralyzed and depressed. The ex-judge maintained that his wife had ended her life with the weapon he had given her, while the Crown argued that he had opened fire. Complex ballistic evidence focusing on the angle of the shot was at the heart of the trial.
After spending almost ten years behind bars, Jacques Delisle was released when the federal Minister of Justice exceptionally ordered a new trial to be held in April 2021, concluding that there were “reasonable grounds to conclude that ‘a miscarriage of justice had probably occurred.’
In April 2022, the Superior Court ordered a halt to the legal process due to the “serious negligence” of the Crown pathologist. Then in 2023, the Court of Appeal ordered a new trial. It is this decision that Jacques Delisle appealed to the Supreme Court.