The Conseil de la magistrature du Québec has rejected all the complaints received against judge Matthieu Poliquin who had absolved Simon Houle, an engineer convicted of the sexual assault of a woman.
The magistrate’s judgment had aroused many reactions from the population as well as elected officials who had expressed their indignation.
Simon Houle had pleaded guilty to charges of sexual assault and voyeurism.
In his sentencing decision, Judge Poliquin had decreed a conditional discharge, which meant that Simon Houle would not have a criminal record: the magistrate had estimated, among other factors, that this would have “negative and disproportionate consequences” on engineering career. These words shocked many people.
Several complaints had thus been filed against Judge Poliquin of the Court of Quebec, we read in the decision of the Judicial Council sent to the complainants on Wednesday.
The Council finds that no breach of ethics during the hearing was reproached to the judge, and none in connection with his behavior.
The complaints “rather allege that he made errors in his assessment of the facts of a case as well as in his analysis of the law and the factors or criteria for determining the appropriate sentence. »
However, the Judicial Council is not a Court of Appeal and cannot review judgments, she wrote in her decision.
Its role is limited to examining whether the magistrate targeted by a complaint has breached his obligations imposed by his Code of Ethics.
This is not the case here, continues the Council, which therefore rejects the complaints on this basis. “Unfounded”, it is written.
The Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions (DPCP) wants to appeal the sentence and will soon ask the Court of Appeal for permission to do so.
“It will then be up to the Court to consider the arguments of the DPCP which echo those of the plaintiffs before the Council, in particular the fairness of the sentence and the conformity of the principles applied by the judge with regard, for example, to case law. »