Important witnesses never called to the stand. Essential evidence willfully or carelessly put aside. Informers attracted more by the greed than by the need to make amends or the desire to serve justice. All these scenarios have already been seen, and reviewed, some corrected over the years, others still persistent. Justice is not divine: it is orchestrated and rendered by human beings just as fallible as the defendants who parade day after day in these palaces which have only “palaces” in name.
“The judicial system, we try to stay away from it, but we must understand how it works,” says Marie-Claude Barrette, well-known host of the TVA network for having responded to Two girls in the morning for 12 years, and who since last fall has been at the head of a program bearing his first name. And if the formula has changed somewhat after this passage, the main principles of the interviewer have not suffered from the transition: empathy, listening and friendliness are still there.
The person in front of me
These are the qualities that made the success of the one who, until the beginning of her forties, was best known as the spouse of the former politician Mario Dumont, also a host. And if they now exercise the same profession, Marie-Claude Barrette prefers to stay away from the political arena and its casseroles, guided above all by her passion for human beings. “I have often been asked who I would dream of interviewing. But that’s the person in front of me! Because everyone is interesting ”, underlines the one for whom an interview is at the same time“ a pleasure and a privilege ”.
Her capital of sympathy built up over the years has led her to other television adventures, such as the series Where are you ?, in which she stirred the ashes of the painful past of loved ones still mourning a loved one who has passed away under unresolved circumstances. Innocence Quebec Project is not quite the logical continuation, but this documentary series also sticks to the universe of the crime, this time from the point of view of the lawyers, and especially of four victims of miscarriages of justice whose life has turned to everything never. They too would have liked to stay away from this system, but it put their hand to the collar, sometimes squeezing very hard.
Projet Innocence Québec (PIQ) is also, and above all, an initiative that will not fail to amaze those who had never heard of it until now – and Marie-Claude Barrette was one of them. “When Marie-Christine Pouliot, producer at Attraction Images, told me about it, it turned me on right away, but what I wanted above all was to introduce Lida Sara Nouraie and Nicholas Saint-Jacques, two Criminal lawyers of extraordinary generosity and remarkable intelligence. They impress me enormously. “
And she’s not the only one. Because these two lawyers form a couple, raise their three young children, are associated with the Nouraie Group, accumulate prestigious prizes and distinctions, but are above all the directing souls of PIQ, an organization offering free services to defendants who have exhausted all their remedies and who are still in prison or on very supervised release. But before taking them under their wing, the duo do a lot of research necessary to ensure the validity of their request.
“When I talk about PIQ, and to illustrate what I experienced by observing them from the inside, I use the example of the puzzle: they do not know the number of pieces it contains, and yet less what image we will see at the end, ”says the one who considers it essential to show the flaws in the system, but also its imperative need. Because according to her, Lida Sara Nouraie, Nicholas Saint-Jacques and all the law students from UQAM who parade each year to lend a hand to PIQ believe deeply in this institution, and defend it while accepting its flaws, without counting that recognizing them and correcting them “gives the system even more credibility”.
In the shadow of a doubt
Series Innocence Québe Projectc gives a large place to this duo of lawyers, whose passion and dedication will do more than many advertising campaigns to restore the image of their profession. We can also feel this admiration in the eyes of the protagonists that Marie-Claude Barrette and her team have decided to follow in their long peregrinations towards reaching their judicial Grail. Because no, the employees of PIQ do not look like a small army of vigilantes landing at the last second to save the victims of a tragic end. Their task is much more complex, and considerably less flamboyant.
Marie-Claude Barrette did not cultivate this heroic vision, but was all the same surprised by the rigor of their approach. “PIQ never asks the question: are they guilty or not? The real question is this: were they entitled to a fair and equitable trial? This changes the whole perspective, and transforms their work into a real investigation. “This is colossal in the face of the mass of documents to be sifted through to find the smallest detail that could help the lawyers to convince the Criminal Conviction Review Group” to go further because there is new evidence “.
This is what Daniel Jolivet and Claude Paquin hope for, two men who have never claimed to be altar boys, but who say they are not murderers. For 25 years, Jolivet has been proclaiming his innocence, asserting that he is not the author of a quadruple murder committed in 1992 in Brossard. PIQ has supported it in its efforts since the founding of the organization in the early 2000s.
“He is starting his 29e year of imprisonment, he who had received a sentence of 25 years, specifies Marie-Claude Barrette. I did not know that if you persist in not acknowledging your crime after your sentence, you do not get out of jail, because the parole board judges that you are a danger to society. As for Paquin, his bad company played tricks on him, and a well-paid informer – in the 1980s, investigators did not bother too much with the truth of those who accused others to pocket money… – named him primarily responsible for a sordid crime. His chances of success are slim, his patience at the end of his rope, but his gratitude towards PIQ infinite.
The host does not hide it: these exchanges have sometimes upset her. But above all, she hopes that the wish of Lida Sara Nouraie and Nicholas Saint-Jacques will come true, that is to make PIQ known to as many people as possible, particularly among inmates, but also to their families and relatives who have not abandoned them. . “For me, PIQ is justice within justice”, summarizes Marie-Claude Barrette.