Trial finally begins for two men accused of three homicides
A jury selected more than two months ago finally began hearing evidence in the trial of two men accused of issuing orders that resulted in three deaths while they allegedly ran a drug-trafficking network.
“I know it has been long,” Superior Court Justice Éliane Perreault told the 14 jurors who were selected in February to hear evidence in the murder trial of Yves Denis, 38, and Denis Lefebvre, 57.
Both men are accused of ordering the murders of two men and an assault on another, Kevin Walter, who died of his injuries after he was beaten.
Perreault gave her introductory instructions to the jury on April 5, but offered little explanation as to why they only began hearing evidence for the first time on Thursday. The trial is being held at the Gouin courthouse in northern Montreal.
Sixteen people were selected to the jury in February, but two were only chosen in case any of the first 14 jurors would have asked to be excused before the trial actually started. The two extra jurors were allowed to leave on Thursday.
“I know you must have been wondering in the past weeks what this case will be about,” prosecutor Jonathan Meunier said in his opening statement.
He then informed the jury about some of the witnesses they will hear from in the coming months.
The homicides occurred between April 2009 and May 2010 in three different parts of Quebec. The accused are charged with two counts of first-degree murder and one count of manslaughter. They are also charged with conspiring to kill two of the victims and with plotting to have Walter assaulted in Val d’Or on April 15, 2009.
One witness who will testify is a contract killer who turned informant and whose name cannot be published because of a publication ban. The man, who is currently serving a life sentence, participated in the murder of Johnny (Le Notaire) Coutu, who was killed in Laval in 2009. Meunier told the jury that Benoît (Ti-Ben) Denis, the half-brother of Yves Denis, acted as the getaway driver in the slaying.
Meunier said the house where Coutu was residing when he was fatally shot was equipped with security cameras and the jury will see footage of the informant as he approached the home in Laval before he shot Coutu. The killer then headed for a vehicle driven by Benoît Denis.
Meunier went on to say that the prosecution will prove that the accused ordered that Benoît Denis be killed because he talked too much to other people about Coutu’s murder. The hired gunman who shot Coutu also killed Benoît Denis, on May 13, 2010, in St - Alphonse Rodriguez, a town near Joliette.
“(The informant) is not a serial killer. He did not take pleasure in the murders,” Meunier said, while acknowledging that the key prosecution witness was a killer-for-hire.
Meunier said the homicides were carried out “for the benefit” of a drug-trafficking network that the accused were running in the Abitibi region. He said Coutu was targeted because, despite having worked as a notary in the past, he tried to establish his own drug-trafficking turf in the region and the two men now accused of his murder saw his as unwanted competition.
The Crown’s theory is that Denis, Lefebvre and other men initially plotted to kill Coutu by blowing up his vehicle. The attempt failed and Coutu sought revenge by setting fire to several properties owned by the accused and their drugtrafficking partners. Meunier said that Coutu even talked to a police officer about the conflict before he was killed and the officer will be called as a witness during the trial.
Meunier also noted that the homicides were carried out while the accused and other people were under investigation in Project Écrivisse, an investigation by the Sûreté du Québec into drug trafficking in the Abitibi region. The prosecutor noted that several conversations between people tied to the network were secretly recorded by the police during the investigation.