The Fifth Estate TV - CBC news online
He was one of the country’s most respected judges who went from the bench to behind bars. The first judge in Canada ever to be convicted of murder. Sentenced to life in prison for killing his wife. The Fifth Estate: Jacques Delisle, Murder and the Judge, CBC 2015
A marriage that had lasted nearly fifty years. ibid.
At first it certainly looked like suicide. ibid.
Delisle was leading a double life: he had been in a relationship with his former secretary for years. ibid.
He says he cocked the weapon and left it on the table beside her. ibid.
‘Please, Nicole, think what you want to do … I pleaded with her.’ ibid. husband to wife
‘There are innocent persons in prison. You have one in front of you.’ ibid. Delisle interview
The Quebec Court of Appeal has overturned a decision that allowed a former judge, who is now 88, to avoid a second trial in the death of his wife.
In 2012, Jacques Delisle, a retired judge with the Quebec Court of Appeal, was convicted of first-degree murder in the 2009 death of his wife, 71-year-old Marie Nicole Rainville, and was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.
He spent nine years in prison before David Lametti, the federal justice minister at the time, ordered a retrial after finding that ‘a miscarriage of justice likely occurred’ in the case. One of the Crown’s experts made serious mistakes in the original pathology report that led to his conviction.
In April 2022, a Quebec Superior Court judge agreed with Delisle’s legal team that a second trial would be unfair, given the magnitude of those errors, and granted a stay in legal proceedings. CBC News online article 6th September 2023, ‘Court overturns stay granted to 88-year-old former Quebec judge in wife’s killing’