(Quebec) The lawyer for the saber killer of Old Quebec referred several times in cross-examination to the experience of a Crown expert, who argued that Carl Girouard was not the victim of delirium in the time to kill two innocent people.
Posted at 5:29 p.m.
“Have you seen this often, mission delirium in your short career?” asked defense lawyer Pierre Gagnon of neuropsychologist William Pothier.
Mand Gagnon also mentioned in another question the “young practice” of the Crown expert, during a tough cross-examination at the Quebec courthouse.
“I have already met patients who had this type of delirium. How many times is it hard to say,” replied the Dr Pothier.
“I suggest to you that it is so rare that Mr. Girouard was the first? replied the killer’s lawyer, in what seemed a way of suggesting that the expert would not be able to recognize a “mission delirium” if he saw one.
The neuropsychologist who spent nearly seven hours with the accused comes to a conclusion that undermines the defense case. According to him, Carl Girouard was not in psychosis and the victim of a delirium during his macabre trip.
Rather, he is an avoidant narcissist, with antisocial traits, who had hatched a murderous plan to show off.
“We have no clue in the profile of a psychotic disorder”, concludes the neuropsychologist, who gave the killer two psychological tests, the Rorschach and the MMPI 2.
In cross-examination, however, the Crown’s expert indicated that “ these are not diagnostic tests, you have to be careful, it’s not pure science, it’s still a question of probability”.
The defense expert, psychiatrist Gilles Chamberland, concluded that Girouard is a schizophrenic victim of a grandiose delirium fueled by video games. He couldn’t tell right from wrong. The jurors will also hear this week the psychiatrist Sylvain Faucher, another Crown expert.
Remember that the mental state of the accused is at the heart of the proceedings. Girouard admitted to killing two bystanders and injuring five others on October 31, 2020 in Old Quebec. But he pleads not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder.