Turcotte deserves 17 years in jail, says Crown

Archival Photo Chantal Poirier
Guy Turcotte

Guilty

Benoît Philie

Friday, July 7 2017 17:04

UPDATE
Friday, 7 July, 2017 23:20

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The ex-cardiologist Guy Turcotte was quite conscious when he killed his children in 2009, and fully deserves its 17 years of prison farms, estimated the Crown in a brief filed to the Court of appeal this week.

“The adjustment disorder he was afflicted with made all the same responsible for the crimes that he committed because he was conscious and in touch with reality when he killed his two children,” insisted the prosecutor of criminal and penal prosecutions René Verret, in the document of twenty pages.

He refutes the argument of the defence, which calls for a reduction of sentence on appeal and insists on the fact that Turcotte was in possession of his means in the evening of the tragedy, as pointed out by experts during the trial.

He also stated that the judge André Vincent saw just by writing in his judgment that ” the crimes committed are heinous and horrible and [that] the sentence must reflect the social stigma and the fair punishment for the acts performed while taking into account the moral culpability of the offender “.

Mental illness

On his side, Guy Turcotte pleads mental illness to apply to the Court of appeal to be eligible for parole until they have served 17 years in prison.

“A period […] over the age of 15 is only justified in the presence of a prognosis of dangerousness convincing […] The court itself has recognized that [Turcotte] was only a low risk of recurrence,” wrote the lawyers, Peter and Guy Poupart, in their brief filed in may.

46 knife

Turcotte, 45, stabbed his children, Anne-Sophie and Olivier, 46 times on 20 February 2009 in their home in Piedmont, in the Laurentians. They had 3 and 5 years.

The ex-doctor had just split from his wife, who had started seeing another man.

It also had the purpose of the washer on the evening of the tragedy to try to put an end to his days.

At his first trial, a jury had found not criminally responsible for his actions because of a mental disorder and he had been interned at the institut Philippe-Pinel in Montreal.

Turcotte was eventually convicted of second degree murder at a second trial in 2015.

Justice André Vincent was then sentenced to life in prison, without the possibility of parole before the age of 17.

However, this period is much too long, believes the murderer, who hopes for a revision of sentence is between 10 and 15 years in prison.

— With Michael Nguyen