Found guilty last month of the first degree murder of Guylaine Potvin, which occurred 24 years earlier, Marc-André Grenon is appealing his conviction.
His lawyers filed a notice of appeal on Friday at the Quebec courthouse accusing the Superior Court judge of errors, according to Radio-Canada and TVA.
According to them, Judge Francois Huot would have, among other things, erred in law by opening the door, in his instructions to the jury, to a guilty verdict based on premeditation, when there was no evidence to support this theory, explains Me Karine Poliquin and Vanessa Pharand.
After less than an hour of deliberation, on February 20, a jury found him guilty of the first degree murder of Guylaine Potvin. The young woman was found lifeless in her apartment in Jonquière on April 28, 2000.
Marc-André Grenon was arrested in October 2022, in Granby. A few months earlier, thanks to a surveillance operation, the police were able to recover a cardboard glass that the suspect had thrown in a trash can after going to see a film at the cinema. Analysis of a DNA sample taken from this glass matched DNA found at the crime scene 22 years earlier.
This shadowing operation had been authorized since his last name had emerged as a “priority” in the police investigation thanks to an innovative method of genetic analysis developed by the Laboratory of Judicial Sciences and Forensic Medicine.