Contrecoeur accused call for trial to be halted
The defence isn’t responsible for the long delay in the Contrecoeur corruption trial and the case should be stopped because it has dragged on for too long, a lawyer for some of the accused argued on Tuesday.
Lawyers for Frank Zampino, the former No. 2 politician at Montreal city hall, and others accused of fraud in connection with the 2007 sale of the city-owned Faubourg Contrecoeur, are seeking to have the trial halted on the grounds of unreasonable delay since the group was arrested in May 2012.
Quebec Court Judge Yvan Poulin heard arguments from the defence on Tuesday concerning their requests for a stay of proceedings.
Of the 51 months, or just over 1,530 days, that the charges have been pending against Zampino and the others accused, 533 days have been eaten up by institutional delays, 588 days have been lost due to no one’s fault and 207 days are attributable to court-initiated procedures, such as case management hearings, defence lawyer Isabelle Lamarche argued before Poulin.
The Contrecoeur trial began in February, but has yet to hear from a single witness or hear any evidence because the court has dealt with a series of motions, most of them filed by the defence.
The trial is scheduled to resume in January.
Besides Zampino, Quebec’s anticorruption squad, UPAC, arrested Paolo Catania, former president of Construction Frank Catania et Associés Inc., and four former company executives in the Contrecoeur case. The firm is also charged.
Poulin asked Lamarche on Tuesday whether any delays were due to “complaisance” (obligingness) between the defence lawyers. However, Lamarche said that on the contrary, the lawyers have expressed in different ways that they’re concerned with getting court dates to move ahead and have been prepared to go to trial.
The case has dragged on partly because of court availability and because of the difficulty of setting court dates among multiple lawyers, she said. The health of one of the men arrested in the case, former municipal political fundraiser Bernard Trépanier, also took up part of the court’s time. Trépanier, who began cancer treatments after the trial started, was granted a separate trial in April.
Poulin rejected earlier motions from the defence to stay the proceedings in June. The defence argued at the time that late disclosure of certain evidence infringed their clients’ right to a fair trial.
The hearing on the latest requests to halt the trial is to continue on Thursday.
The Contrecoeur trial began in February, but has yet to hear from a single witness or hear any evidence.