CHARGED. FREED. RE-CHARGED. CONVICTED.
Killer had gone free when case stayed for delay
OTTAWA • More than six years after Fouad Nayel was lured to a hunting camp and executed, his killer was found guilty Wednesday, ending a spiralling legal drama that tested the limits of Canada’s court system and the patience of a grieving family.
Adam Picard was found guilty of first-degree murder at the Ottawa courthouse following a winding road through the changing landscape of the Canadian legal system that began in December 2012 when he was arrested and charged.
At one stage the case against Picard was stayed under a “Jordan application” — based on an unreasonable delay in bringing him to trial. But the Crown appealed and the charge was later reinstated.
For Amine and Nicole Nayel, their journey for justice for their son began in June 2012, when Fouad Nayel didn’t come home for Father’s Day dinner.
Nayel, 28, a construction labourer, told his father on June 17, 2012, that he was heading to Petawawa for a few hours but would be back with Chinese food, just in time for their annual Father’s Day tradition. His parents would never see him alive again.
The Nayels, consumed with heartache, became amateur detectives, poring through their son’s phone records, searching motels and stores from Ottawa to Petawawa, even broadcasting sketches of five men sent to them by a psychic in Britain.
In November 2012, a hiker would make a gruesome discovery in the woods near Calabogie: Fouad’s badly decomposed body, 100 kilometres west of Ottawa.
Picard, a former military man and native of Thunder Bay, was studying culinary arts at the Cordon Bleu in Ottawa and living in Orléans when he was arrested the following month.
Initially, Picard’s trial was slated to begin in November 2016, four years after he was arrested.
But a few months earlier had come a Supreme Court of Canada ruling that would have a significant effect on justice.
In July 2016, the Supreme Court of Canada, in a 5-4 ruling, put time limits on court delay, saying unreasonable delay was to be presumed if proceedings topped 18 months in provincial court or 30 months in Superior Court. If a case exceeded the prescribed limit, a stay would be granted.
Applications for stays would colloquially become known as a Jordan applications, named after the high court’s R. v. Jordan ruling.
On Nov. 4, 2016, prosecutors received notice of Picard’s application to have the murder charge against him stayed, arguing that his right to have a trial within a reasonable time had been violated.
In the Ottawa courthouse, these were untested waters as the high court’s Jordan decision related to a drug possession and trafficking case, not murder. However, Picard’s application was granted, the first time a murder charge in Ontario was stayed because of Jordan.
Ontario Superior Court Justice Julianne Parfett, who stayed the charge, told Nayel’s family: “This decision is a very, very difficult one … I understand at the end of the day, you will feel that justice was not done,”
The entire system had failed both the Nayels and Picard, who, too, was a victim, the court said.
Picard maintained his innocence as he walked out of the courthouse a free man.
“I’m relieved that this is all over and I would just like to get back to my life … And I am innocent of these charges.”
The Crown immediately appealed the court’s stay of the murder charge. It asked for a new trial to be held and alleged the judge did not properly assess the complexity of the case and erred in characterizing the delays and that Picard’s eleventhhour charter application came too late for the prosecution to adequately prepare.
In June 2017, that appeal was heard. By September, the first-degree murder charge against the man who had walked free eight months before was reinstated.
Ontario’s highest court ruled Picard must stand trial.
“First degree murder is the most serious offence in the Criminal Code. Given the serious nature of the alleged crime, there is a heightened societal interest in a trial on the merits,” Justice Paul Rouleau said in writing for the three-member appeal panel.
The panel said the Picard case deserved more latitude since charges were laid well before the release of Jordan, and that the delays incurred would have been acceptable under the previous legal regime.
The former soldier was rearrested and once again put behind bars, which is where he’ll stay, despite efforts made by his defence team.
According to the Crown’s case, Picard was reeling from a significant loss from a previous dope deal when he lured Nayel to a Calabogie hunt camp, shot him twice and robbed him of marijuana worth $30,000.
Picard testified in his own defence, claiming Nayel had arranged a cocaine deal that day with two mystery men who showed up and killed Nayel with Picard’s shotgun, ordered Picard to dig a hole and then let him go after Picard pleaded for his life.
They took a picture of his driver’s licence, then tossed the shotgun back in his trailer as he fled, Picard testified.