Court upholds sentence for election-night shooter
The Quebec Court of Appeal has decided that the Superior Court judge who sentenced Richard Henry Bain for the 2012 election-night shooting made a fair decision.
In a unanimous ruling delivered Wednesday afternoon, five appellate judges decided not to change the decision made by Justice Guy Cournoyer in November 2016 to set the period of parole ineligibility attached to Bain’s life sentence at 20 years. The decision means Bain, who is currently 68, will not be eligible for full parole until 2032.
On the night of Sept. 4, 2012, Bain drove to the Metropolis, a concert hall where the Parti Québécois was celebrating its victory in the election held earlier that day. As he would later tell a psychiatrist following his arrest, he was ready to shoot as many separatists as he could that night and had plans to set the building on fire.
Bain’s van was loaded with several firearms and ammunition, but the semi-automatic rifle he was carrying jammed after he fired a single shot. Unfortunately, the shot killed Denis Blanchette and wounded Dave Courage, two men who were working at Metropolis. Bain also managed to set fire to a staircase behind the club.
While two police officers were pursuing him, Bain tried to shoot one with a 9 mm pistol, but the firearm didn’t go off because he had failed to load a bullet in the chamber.
Following a long trial held in 2016, a jury convicted Bain on one count of second-degree murder and three counts of attempted murder.
“The paramount aggravating factor in this case is the political nature of the offences, which are an assault on our democratic process,” Cournoyer wrote in his sentence decision on Nov. 18, 2016.
The judge noted Bain headed to the club with his rifle in hand just as then-premier-elect Pauline Marois was about to make her victory speech. After he was arrested and detained, Bain somehow uploaded a recording to a Facebook page stating that his intention all along was to prevent Marois from making her speech.
The Crown asked that Bain’s parole ineligibility be set at 25 years, the maximum, while defence lawyer Alan Guttman asked for the minimum, 10 years. Cournoyer set Bain’s parole ineligibility at 20 years, noting Bain had “failed to convince the court by balance of probabilities that his mental condition should be considered a mitigating factor.”
Neither side was satisfied with the decision; both filed appeals asking that Bain’s parole ineligibility be changed.
While all five of the Quebec Court of Appeal judges agreed there is no reason to change Cournoyer’s decision, they were split 3-2 in their opinions on how Cournoyer forgot to ask the jury for a recommendation on a sentence before they were discharged.
The two dissenting judges were also very critical of how Cournoyer reached his decision, but they still felt there was no reason to change it. For example, the dissenting judges felt Cournoyer did not address what type of person Bain was before the shooting.
Bain had no previous criminal record and had held down a regular job for years before he began to experience mental health problems.
“I’m a little disappointed. I’m going to read it carefully because I don’t understand it,” Guttman said on Wednesday in reference to what the dissenting judges wrote.
He said he will discuss the matter with Bain before he decides if he will take the case to the Supreme Court of Canada.