MONTREAL — Over the past year, a Quebec non-profit that advocates for the wrongfully convicted has convinced the federal justice minister to take a second look at two cases in which people have been declared guilty.
Project Innocence Quebec says its work led Justice Minister Arif Virani in April to order a new trial in the case of Claude Paquin, a Quebec man convicted in 1983 on two counts of first-degree murder. And in October, the organization was able to have the case of M.R., an individual convicted of sex assault against a minor in 2002, returned to the Quebec Court of Appeal for a new hearing.
"We are talking about one or two cases a year in Canada for which the minister of justice will grant a corrective action," Saint-Jacques said.Paquin's case dates back to events from 1978. He was convicted of murder in 1983 and lost his appeal in 1987. One year later, the Supreme Court of Canada refused to grant a request for leave to appeal.
On April 29, Virani's office said in a statement that the minister"has determined that there are reasonable grounds to conclude that a miscarriage of justice likely occurred" in Paquin's case."This determination is a result of the identification of new and significant information that was not submitted to the courts at the time of Mr. Paquin’s trial or appeal, calling into question the overall fairness of the process.
"Just putting the file together, putting the puzzle together again, it's very complicated because there are documents that are lost, documents that are found and there are several lawyers who handled the case," he explained.
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