After a month of work, the pleadings ended on Wednesday at the trial on the attack on Kanata in Old Quebec. A laborious exercise, which leaves the jury faced with two opposing visions of the state of mental health of the accused.
Defense and prosecution attorneys each spent half a day arguing their case on Wednesday.
First to plead, Carl Girouard’s lawyer, Mr.and Pierre Gagnon first thanked the jury who followed the trial, emphasizing that it was not an “obvious” case, describing it as “painful” at times. During the exercise, the jurors notably had to watch videos of rare violence and horrific photos of the crime scenes.
Subsequently, they spent days listening to long exchanges – often pointed – between lawyers and expert witnesses on psychiatric profiles and the methods for defining them.
The best psychiatrist
In his argument, Mr.and Gagnon also emphasized psychiatry. The accused, who wantonly killed two strangers and injured five others on Halloween 2020, suffered from schizophrenia, he claimed. He therefore could not be found guilty because he did not know what he was doing when the actions were taken.
Why believe him when the other camp speaks rather of a much less severe “narcissistic disorder”? Because the defense expert, the Dr Gilles Chamberland, is the best, substantially supported Mand Gagnon. “He is part of an elite of psychiatrists recognized by his peers,” he said, mentioning his 41-page curriculum vitae. It is not only recognized in Quebec, not only in Canada, that it is recognized internationally. »
Conversely, M.and Gagnon questioned the methods and rigor of the two expert witnesses of the Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions, neuropsychologist William Pothier and psychiatrist Sylvain Faucher.
The Dr Pothier, he pointed out, mistakenly thought the defendant was not on medication when he assessed him when although he had stopped taking them, the tablets could still work for weeks. . “What value can we give to these results when the premises are false? “, he launched.
As for the Dr Faucher, his expertise is rather focused on problems of a sexual nature, he said, also accusing him on several occasions of having “biases” and hesitations in his assertions.
Finally, M.and Gagnon urged the jury not to give in to a “trap” by the opposing party as to the conclusions that could be drawn from the fact that Carl Girouard was already talking about killing people at the age of 16. “No,” we couldn’t have known at the time what was going to happen on Halloween 2020, he argued. “As long as the decision has not been made to do so, it is not planning. He doesn’t know himself that he’s going to do it, he doesn’t know when. It was when the delirium was strong enough, powerful enough that the events materialized. Before that, it was not planning. It was a project. […] The disease was beginning. »
A schizophrenia quickly disappeared
In the afternoon, the Crown prosecutor invited the jurors to show “common sense” by focusing in particular on the relatively normal behavior of the accused after the fact. “Are you going to believe that Carl Girouard, who has been obsessed with this mission for six months, will get out of his mission, get out of his psychosis in a snap and never talk about it again, without any medication? “launched M.and François Godin to the jury.
In the eyes of the prosecution, the killer simply stopped talking about it because “his fantasy” had been fulfilled, disappointing as that was for him.
To establish whether the accused can be found not guilty by reason of mental disorder, the jury must find that he was unaware of what he was doing and unable to distinguish right from wrong. But the 26-year-old man does not even meet the first criterion, pleaded Mand Godin before pointing out that the defense had “the burden of proof” on his mental health.
As for the weaknesses of the experts raised by Mand Gagnon, the prosecution replied that their hesitations testified to a certain “caution”, that psychiatry was “not an exact science” and that the jurors should rather be wary of the too categorical statements of Dr.r Chamberland.
The Superior Court is due to resume its work on Thursday, the time chosen by Judge Richard Grenier to give his instructions to the members of the jury, an exercise that will continue Monday morning. The jury will then have to meet behind closed doors until a verdict is reached.
If convicted, the accused faces a life sentence. Conversely, if he is declared not criminally responsible, he will have to be evaluated by a review board which will establish whether or not he constitutes a threat to society. The outcome of this examination will determine whether he will have to be hospitalized or may be released, and under what conditions.