Police called to the scene of a wife who has been killed by gunshot are conditioned by training and experience to suspect the husband. In 2009 the elderly Nicole Rainville died by gunshot and her husband Jacques Delisle, a former judge for the Court of Appeal in Quebec was charged, tried and convicted for her murder and served almost nine years in prison.
Investigators have also found that the details of the surviving spouse’s account of the death are often the way into exposing their role in their wife’s death. Delisle had called 911 and his story was that he had just entered the room and found his wife dead. For seven months afterward, apparently Delisle had no idea he was under suspicion –perhaps sheltered by his self-regard.
There were both sympathetic and troubling circumstances. His wife had suffered a stroke 10 years earlier and had limited movement. Delisle had been conducting an affair with his secretary. There were problems with his story.
Where suspicion has surrounded this type of case prosecutors have often been helped by forensic evidence. Indeed another common experience is that forensics is called in aid to plug the gap in the prosecution’s case without sufficient safeguards against misuse. In the Delisle case forensic examination yielded a black smudge on Nicole’s hand and concluded that the bullet went at a perpendicular angle into her head—undermining the case for suicide.
To make appearances worse in the minds of many, on the day that he was supposed to testify, he decided to remain silent.
James Lockyer, the director of Innocence Canada, decided to take on Delisle’s case in 2014, believing that he might be innocent of first-degree murder. Ontario pathologist Michael Shkrum found different conclusions regarding Rainville’s death. The fragments of the bullet, for example, didn’t follow the trajectory of the bullet suggested by the pathologist who testified in 2012.
Delisle, in 2016, broke his silence on the case, saying that he had lied to the police in 2009. Delisle now claims that Nicole had requested that he bring her the gun and put it on the table and give her an hour. He pleaded with her not to take her life but left it up to her. He further claims that he was shocked to see that she had gone through with it when he came home. He now recognises that he was wrong for assisting her suicide and pleaded guilty to manslaughter. He was convicted of manslaughter on March 14, 2024. The court took into account his nearly nine years in prison and he was sentenced to one additional day in prison. Jacques Delisle, at age 89, is now a free man. The prosecutor has observed that while they do not accept his revised story in the circumstances they agreed to the plea of guilty to manslaughter.
This fifteen-year legal battle has joined the annals of mistrial and delay occasioned by faulty forensic evidence. Efforts to support criminal investigation with independent scientifically tested forensic techniques have only been partially carried out. Getting it right the first time is often the best means of avoiding both the appearance, and in some cases, the reality of bias in the analysis and presentation of forensic science.
