Dominico Scarfo, who has been on trial by jury for several weeks for plotting the murders and for killing mob lieutenants Lorenzo Giordano and Rocco Sollecito in 2016, will not testify or present a defense.
Posted at 1:07 p.m.
This was announced on Wednesday morning by his lawyer, Mr.and Luc Trempe, to the jury and judge Michel Pennou of the Superior Court. The latter then indicated to the jurors that the next stages of the trial would be the closing arguments of the two parties, the instructions of the judge to the jury, and the deliberations.
Mand Trempe said he would have no evidence to present, and his client would not testify, after finishing cross-examining a former hitman turned police infiltrator who was the prosecution’s key witness .
According to the prosecution’s theory, Giordano and Sollecito were murdered in the context of a conflict between a Calabrian clan of the Montreal mafia, led by brothers Andrew and Salvatore Scoppa, and the Sicilian clan.
Scarfo would have been the one who pulled the trigger during the murder of Giordano, while in the case of Sollecito, he would have driven a car in front of the victim’s car and forced it to stop for several seconds, so as to allowing a hitman to get out of a bus shelter he was hiding in and shoot the mafia lieutenant on May 27, 2016.
But three years after the murders, the hitman became a civilian undercover agent for the Sûreté du Québec and recorded Scarfo without his knowledge with a portable recording device. Listening to these tapes and the mole’s testimony that followed formed the core of the evidence presented by the prosecution during the trial.
The jury wants to question the mole
Interestingly, after the infiltrator had finished his testimony on Wednesday morning, the jurors asked to be able to ask him questions directly to obtain clarifications on certain passages of the recordings listened to, but Judge Pennou refused their request.
“A criminal trial does not necessarily offer answers to all the questions and, as judge and jury, you have to accept that. The evidence, you must accept it and consider it as you received it, ”the magistrate told the jurors.
It is not yet known when the pleadings will begin.
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