The long saga of ex-judge Jacques Delisle having ended, it is now possible for us to bring all the evidence into the file, which was until now subject to a publication ban.
• Read also: Former judge Jacques Delisle pleads guilty to the homicide of his wife
• Read also: Murder or suicide? Here is the scientific proof at the heart of Jacques Delisle’s case
• Read also: The DPCP still convinced that he had the weapon
The death of Nicole Rainville
The wife and mother of Jacques Delisle’s two children, Nicole Rainville, was found lifeless, with a bullet in the head, in the marital condo, in November 2009.
Nicole Rainville
Screenshot, TVA News
When the police arrived, Jacques Delisle told them that his wife had taken her own life: she was depressed, physically diminished, and no longer had any taste for life. Her husband explains that she killed herself with a loaded gun, which her husband had left on a small table at the entrance to the condo. Which was wrong. “An error for which he paid dearly,” said his lawyer.
A strange task
A strange stain of black smoke, in the palm of the deceased’s left hand, will become an essential element of the file. This tattoo of black smoke leads the public prosecutor’s experts to believe that Nicole Rainville could not have fired with her left hand. A weapon normally handled does not leave such a mark. As the lady is paralyzed on the entire right side of her body… a third person had to hold the weapon.
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An extra-marital affair
Jacques Delisle will be arrested in the summer of 2010 for the premeditated murder of his wife. During the investigation, episodes of shadowing revealed that the ex-judge had been having an affair for several years with his secretary, a woman 20 years his junior.
No testimony
Jacques Delisle was convicted in June 2012 of the premeditated murder of Nicole Rainville, after a six-week trial, during which a range of experts laid out complex and extensive evidence to determine how Nicole Rainville was killed. died.
Jacques Delisle, who was the last to see his wife alive, never testified during this first trial. He receives a life sentence, with no possibility of parole for 25 years. He was 77 years old. And he became the very first magistrate in Canada to be convicted of the most serious charge in the Criminal Code.
Archive photo
An application for judicial review
Claiming to be the victim of a judicial error, Delisle tried to have the verdict overturned before the Court of Appeal, then before the Supreme Court, without success. His grounds of appeal having been exhausted, he attempted a last resort by contacting the federal Minister of Justice in 2015.
As part of this request for judicial review, the former judge, for the first time, gave his version of the facts surrounding the death of his wife.
Jacques Delisle now claimed to have provided a loaded weapon to his partner, who wanted to put an end to it. Depressed, Nicole Rainville allegedly asked her husband to bring her his pistol, stored above a chest of drawers, in his office.
After trying to dissuade her, the ex-judge allegedly gave her his weapon, loaded. The lady would have taken advantage of her husband’s absence to take action, he maintained.
New Canadian scientific reports, which criticized the work of Crown experts in this matter, were also submitted as part of this request for ministerial review.
Archive photo Stevens LeBlanc
A new trial
After six years of investigation, convinced that a judicial error had possibly been committed in the case, Liberal Minister David Lametti ordered, in 2021, a new trial.
Jacques Delisle, who had spent the previous nine years behind bars, was released on conditions, awaiting further legal proceedings.
A stay of proceedings
The Delisle clan requested and obtained in 2022 a stay of the proceedings on the grounds that the Crown pathologist, who had examined the body of the deceased, had committed serious errors during the autopsy.
By neglecting, among other things, to preserve the brain, it now became impossible for the Delisle clan to determine with certainty the angle of fire and the trajectory of the bullet in Nicole Rainville’s brain, elements which would have made it possible, according to the defense, to demonstrate whether it was a murder or a suicide.
In April 2022, Jacques Delisle was therefore a man free of all accusations.
And other calls
In September 2023, the Court of Appeal overturns the stay of proceedings. In his eyes, the trial could very well be held despite the pathologist’s errors. A jury instruction would be sufficient.
Jacques Delisle thus returned to the charge of first degree murder and was to be tried in a second upcoming trial.
Dissatisfied with this decision, the Delisle clan addressed the Supreme Court in November 2023. The latter was due to rule on this matter on Thursday. She will not have had to do so: Jacques Delisle withdrew from this procedure on Wednesday, before pleading guilty.