A police officer accused of fatally shooting a teenager who threatened to run over him will have another opportunity to argue that he acted in self-defense, during his second trial which began this morning.
• Read also: Despite a judicial “slippage”, a new trial for a police officer accused of manslaughter
Convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 4 years in prison before obtaining a new trial due to errors on the part of a judge, Éric Deslauriers was back in court this Monday at the Saint-Jérôme courthouse. .
Sitting at a desk next to that of his lawyers, he listened to the testimony of a crime scene technician who had been called to work on his case in January 2014.
That day, Sergeant Deslauriers had been called to intervene in the courtyard of the Polyvalente de Sainte-Adèle. However, on site was a 17-year-old boy in a stolen Mazda RX-8. He revved his engine and refused to obey the orders of the Sûreté du Québec policeman.
The young man then began to accelerate in the direction of Deslauriers. Saying he feared for his life, the police officer with more than 20 years of experience fired two shots, fatally hitting the victim.
“Serious error”
During the first trial, judge Joëlle Roy had, however, dismissed evidence favorable to self-defense by stating, among other things, that Deslauriers could have moved and that he was not in the path of the stolen car.
This led to the policeman’s conviction, but the Court of Appeal overturned the decision.
” [La] the factual framework that it retains seems to me to be incompatible with the evidence on certain points which are at the heart of the defense of the accused”, had insisted the highest court of Quebec by ordering a new trial.
Judge Richard Wagner
The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, Richard Wagner, had subsequently made harsh remarks during the hearing of the case at the request of the Crown.
“In my opinion, and I’m speaking here for myself, it’s a judicial skid that happened,” he had dropped.
Chief Justice Wagner also spoke of a “surprising, even worrying decision”, and of a “serious error caused by deficient analysis, interpretation and trial management”.
The Sûreté du Québec police union hoped that these remarks would make the Crown drop the case, but in vain.
The trial, before Judge Éric Côté, is scheduled for several weeks. Deslauriers, 50, is represented by Mes Nadine Touma and Stéphanie Lozeau.