Five men accused in mob slaying denied stay
Case is too ‘complex’ to be thrown out based on Jordan ruling, judge decides
A Superior Court judge has rejected a request from five men, charged in connection with a gangland slaying, who sought to have their case stayed by arguing it has taken the Crown too long to prosecute.
Superior Court Justice Guy Cournoyer delivered his decision Friday morning, one day after another man accused of murder at the Montreal courthouse, Sivaloganathan Thanabalasingham, 31, saw his second-degree murder case stayed because of a Supreme Court of Canada decision (commonly referred to in legal circles as the Jordan decision) rendered last summer.
The Supreme Court ruled that a person accused of a crime in Superior Court should not expect to wait more than 30 months for a trial. Thanabalasingham was charged with the murder of his wife and his murder case was the first in Quebec to be placed under a stay of proceedings since the Jordan decision. Two other murder cases have been stayed, in Ontario and in Alberta.
The five men charged with the gangland slaying: Edrick Antoine, 38, Olivier Gay, 34, Stanley Minuty, 33, Kevin Tate, 33, and Leonard Faustin Etienne, 36, sought to have their cases stayed based on the Jordan decision.
All five are charged with the murder of Gaétan Gosselin, 69, once a close associate of influential organized crime figure Raynald Desjardins. Gosselin was killed in front of his home on Jean Tavenier St. in St-Léonard on Jan. 22, 2013.
Four of the five men made their first court appearance in the case on May 16, 2013. Faustin was arrested several months later. Cournoyer noted in his 44-page decision that the case was delayed twice by technical problems while the Crown turned over evidence to defence lawyers. As part of their motion requesting a stay of proceedings, the defence argued that the Crown caused delays in the case totalling 136 days.
“The accused argue that the current affair does not constitute a complex case. On this question the Court adopts the position of the Crown,” Cournoyer wrote in his decision.
“This is not a typical murder case, neither is it moderately complex. We have to admit without any shadow of a doubt, that the complexity of the case represents an exceptional circumstance.”
Gay is also charged with the firstdegree murder of Vincenzo (Vincent) Scuderi, 49, who was killed outside his home in St-Léonard on Jan. 31, 2013. Scuderi was a close associate of Giuseppe De Vito, a Mafia leader who died of cyanide poisoning on July 8, 2013, while serving a sentence at the Donnaconna Institution, a federal penitentiary near Quebec City.
Scuderi and Gosselin were believed to be rivals of Mafia leader Vito Rizzuto, who fought in 2013 to re-establish his organization’s hold on the Montreal Mafia before he died of natural causes in December of that year.
The trial of the five men is scheduled to begin in January 2018 and end by December of that year.
This is not a typical murder case, neither is it moderately complex.