Montreal law students convince federal justice minister to review two convictions
Global News
Project Innocence Quebec is an initiative of Lida Sara Nouraie, who began the effort in 2002 as a student. She was named as a judge to the Quebec court last November.
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.
Nicholas Saint-Jacques, vice-president of Innocence Quebec and a lecturer at the department of judicial sciences at Université du Québec à Montréal, said it’s no simple matter to have a case returned to court after a verdict has been issued.
“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.
“For us to succeed in a case of this nature is indeed a very big victory.”
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.
Now on full parole, Paquin sought a criminal conviction review in January 2020. Project Innocence Quebec has been working on Paquin’s file since that year.
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.”
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