The verdict was delivered after nearly three days of deliberations. Guénette was charged with second degree murder.
The 35-year-old man was rocking back and forth in the detainee box, visibly nervous. His father let out a long sigh as the jury entered the courtroom.
When jury number four announced the verdict, Éric Guénette looked at his father with a smile. He appeared satisfied.
Guénette was accused of the unpremeditated murder of a 20-year-old young man. Achraf Thimoumi died of gunshot wounds in August 2022.
“It wasn’t me who killed the guy,” repeated Éric Guénette during his trial, saying he was the victim of the manipulation of a dangerous friend.
The judge presented the instructions to the jury Friday morning. From dinner, the 12 jurors were sequestered.
Complicity
From the outset, the jurors knew that Guénette had never shot the victim, Achraf Thimoumi. He accompanied his friend Keven Prévost-Bouchard that day, he is the real author of the murder.
However, given Guénette’s involvement and complicity in this offense, he too inherited a murder charge. Among other things, he drove the vehicle to the scene of the murder and kept the event secret until his arrest, for several weeks.
In testimony during the trial, the defendant told the jury that he had made poor decisions. He maintained that he did not know his friend’s real intentions on the day of the murder. He knew that Keven Prévost-Bouchard had a firearm in his possession, but did not believe it was loaded.
Outside the jury
This verdict allows us to reveal the details of the discussions that took place outside the jury during the trial of Éric Guénette, which ultimately lasted three weeks. All these discussions are subject to a publication ban until a final decision is made.
During the trial, it was decided not to disclose certain information to the jury, to avoid influencing their decision on Guénette’s guilt in the case. For example, the parties agreed not to reveal details of the case of Prévost-Bouchard, who pleaded guilty to a charge of second degree murder last March.
During the pleadings – the lawyers’ last speech – Mr. Louis Belliard took the liberty of disclosing this information, in addition to mentioning several elements of the case which had not been discussed in the trial. In pleadings, to assert something, it absolutely must be supported by evidence or admitted by the parties.
“The defense, with full knowledge of the facts, used what it had no right to do during the trial to ultimately influence the jury,” said Mr. Pierre-Alexandre Bernard, prosecutor for the prosecution, after an objection has been made.
Judge Louis Dionne agreed with him. “Why have you gone beyond what I have forbidden? You did as you please, you ignored the instructions that I gave, that’s what you did,” said the magistrate, addressing Me Belliard.
Trial abortion
The magistrate had no choice but to issue remedial instructions — asking the jury not to take into consideration certain elements of Mr. Belliard’s pleadings. The other option was to declare the trial aborted, and thus start from scratch with a new jury.
Me Bernard criticized the defense for wanting to install “a specter of dishonesty” on the prosecution, for having pleaded without evidence and outside the legal framework that all lawyers must respect. He also underlined that Mr. Belliard demonstrated “a flagrant lack of nuance”.
In response, Mr. Belliard maintained that he had “invented nothing” or that he had shared his opinion.
“It takes a lot of nerve to knowingly contravene your requests before the jury, then maintain and justify them before you,” Mr. Bernard replied to Judge Dionne. Just because something is true doesn’t mean you can suddenly argue for it. […] We have a framework within which everyone must navigate.”
Judge Dionne ruled in favor of the prosecution, emphasizing that a lawyer’s beliefs or their opinion are “irrelevant” at trial.
For a full afternoon, the magistrate and the parties worked on corrections to explain to the jury, so that they could exclude certain elements from their deliberations. This work avoided the abortion of the trial.
