Jury to deliberate for a second week at Richard Henry Bain murder trial

MONTREAL — The judge presiding over Richard Henry Bain’s first-degree murder trial isn’t worried the jury is taking its time with its deliberations.

Quebec Superior Court Justice Guy Cournoyer told the defence and Crown lawyers, gathered in the courtroom Friday to deal with a technical issue, that the jurors’ task is a difficult one.

Their discussions will spill into an eighth day after jurors failed to produce verdicts Friday at the trial of Quebec’s accused election-night shooter.

Bain, 65, is charged with first-degree murder in the slaying of lighting technician Denis Blanchette.

He was killed outside a Montreal nightclub where then-Parti Quebecois leader Pauline Marois was speaking after her election win on Sept. 4, 2012.

Nighttime construction on Hwy 3 in Lethbridge starts April 17

Apr 17, 2025

SASHA launches #BuyABed fundraiser to support vulnerable Lethbridge residents

Apr 04, 2025

$20K grants available: TELUS STORYHIVE Pan-Asian Edition opens applications April 1

Mar 18, 2025

Bain has pleaded not guilty to that charge and three counts of attempted murder, arguing he should be found not criminally responsible by way of mental illness.

The Crown has said Bain was not ill and that his assault was premeditated and politically motivated by anger over the PQ’s election victory.

The judge appeared unfazed by the lengthy jury deliberations.

“Assuming they’re doing what they were told, it requires some time,” Cournoyer said.

The seven women and five men have to go over evidence and reports and try to determine Bain’s mental state at the time of the offences in 2012. They must decide whether he is not criminally responsible of the crimes for which he’s being tried.

If they rule against the defence of not criminally responsible, they must then return verdicts for the four charges.

The current case falls “quite within the realm of what our jurisdiction had in other NCR cases,” Cournoyer said.

Cournoyer presided over the high-profile trial of Luka Rocco Magnotta in 2014, when the jury took eight days before returning a verdict. In another recent NCR case involving former Quebec cardiologist Guy Turcotte, jurors at his second trial took seven days.

Defence lawyer Alan Guttman agreed with Cournoyer that seven to nine days of deliberations can be normal in a case of this magnitude.

“It doesn’t tell me anything, it tells me they’re working hard,” Guttman said when asked what a week’s deliberations signified. “They are an extremely intelligent jury that isn’t asking legal questions because they’ve understood the case.”

Earlier on Friday, jurors grappled with computer woes that caused them to lose notes they’d typed up on a court-issued laptop Thursday.

Cournoyer first suggested a printer be installed in the jury room, but that turned out to be a monumental task.

Access to the secure computer is controlled out of Quebec City and a civil servant who could help a Montreal technician is on vacation until Monday.

Court laptops are configured to view only evidence and they revert back to their original configuration when turned off.

In the end, jurors were given the simplest solution: don’t turn off the laptop or use the tried-and-true method of pen and paper.

———

Follow @sidhartha_b on Twitter

Sidhartha Banerjee, The Canadian Press

var addthis_product = “wpp-5.0.6”;
var wp_product_version = “wpp-5.0.6”;
var wp_blog_version = “4.8.1”;
var addthis_plugin_info = {“cms_name”:”WordPress”,”cms_version”:”4.8.1″,”plugin_name”:”AddThis Sharing Buttons”,”plugin_version”:”5.0.6″,”plugin_mode”:”WordPress”};
if (typeof(addthis_config) == “undefined”) {
var addthis_config = {“ui_atversion”:300,”data_track_clickback”:true,”services_exclude”:”favorites,mailto”,”services_expanded”:”facebook,flipboard,google_plusone_share,linkedin,reddit,pinterest_share,tumblr,twitter,email,print”,”ignore_server_config”:true};
}
if (typeof(addthis_share) == “undefined”) {

}