Defence lawyer found guilty of obstructing justice
A Montreal defence lawyer finds himself staring down the possibility of serving time behind bars after a Quebec Court judge found him guilty of obstructing justice by helping a notorious criminal to intimidate a witness from testifying at his murder trial.
While delivering his decision at the Gouin courthouse on Tuesday, Judge Marc-André Dagenais said he did not believe Dimitrios Strapatsas when the 44-year-old attorney testified in his own defence in August. The judge said he also did not believe John Boulachanis, 43, when the convicted murderer said his childhood friend was the victim of a screwup on his part.
Dagenais also accused Strapatsas of having “played with his words” when he testified and called his versions of events “incoherent” when compared to the rest of the evidence.
Strapatsas kept his left hand over his mouth as he listened to the judge’s decision to convict him on a charge that carries the potential for a 10-year prison term. Both he and his lawyer, Fabio Dell’Aquila, had no comment as they exited the courtroom.
Prosecutor Jennifer Morin said she will examine jurisprudence before deciding what type of sentence the Crown will request in late November.
Boulachanis, convicted of murder in December, was initially part of the same trial as Strapatsas. His lawyer, Marc Labelle, manage to have Boulachanis’s case severed from Strapatsas’s. Labelle did not appreciate Dell’Aquila’s calling Boulachanis as a defence witness because it put him at risk of potentially incriminating himself.
Late in 2014, Boulachanis was at the Rivière des Prairies Detention Centre when he began sharing details about the case in which he was charged with the 1997 murder of a man named Robert Tanguay. The other detainee felt the homicide was gratuitous and decided to become a prosecution witness. He gave the Sûreté du Québec a statement that was recorded on video. The evidence was disclosed to Boulachanis and, in April 2015, he arranged to have a DVD copy of the video smuggled out of the jail by another fellow detainee. That man passed the DVD to his girlfriend, who uploaded it to YouTube. Boulachanis’s girlfriend then gave Strapatsas an envelope containing $200 and he was given instructions to deliver it to the woman who uploaded the video.
Boulachanis claimed he gave the fellow detainee the wrong DVD. He testified he wanted to smuggle out a DVD that showed how filthy the detention centre was in 2015. Dagenais noted this made no sense as the DVD clearly included instructions that made direct reference to the informant.
The Crown’s theory was that Boulachanis wanted other detainees at the detention centre to know the man (whose name cannot be published) was an informant, thereby putting his life in jeopardy, and that Strapatsas aided him in his efforts.
Strapatsas testified he did not know how much money was in the envelope and said he assumed he was running an errand for Boulachanis similar to how he had paid bills for him in the past. Dagenais said the notion of an experienced lawyer delivering an envelope to a complete stranger at a restaurant without first asking questions made no sense.