Case information

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Case summaries are prepared by the Office of the Registrar of the Supreme Court of Canada (Law Branch). Please note that summaries are not provided to the Judges of the Court. They are placed on the Court file and website for information purposes only.

Criminal law – Procedure – Charge to the jury – Evidence – Murder - Defences – Whether the Court of Appeal of Québec ought to have found that medical staff’s failure to resuscitate the victim because of his direction not to reanimate him, constituted some evidence capable of supporting an inference that there had been a break in the chain of causation – Whether the Court of Appeal of Québec erred by ruling that the Trial Judge’s charge on subsection 21(2) of the Criminal Code was not relevant to Denver’s conviction for the first degree murder of the victim – Whether the Court of Appeal of Québec erred in applying subparagraph 686(1)(b)(iii) of the Criminal Code based on speculations by the prosecution’s pathologist – Given that the co-accused’s leave application was allowed by the Supreme Court of Canada, whether denying the Applicant’s application for leave to appeal to this Court might appear unfair not only to anyone facing criminal charges but also to the community at large.

On April 9, 1994, Mr. Maurille Lepage, 82 years old, and Mrs. Béatrice Lavoie, 75 years old, were found bound and tied in their residence. Mrs. Lavoie was lying in a pool of blood and was pronounced dead on site. Mr. Lepage who was lying on the kitchen floor, was still alive. He was brought by ambulance to the hospital where he passed away as a consequence of his injuries. Before he died, the victim was able to state that two individuals had broken into his house to commit a robbery and that he and Mrs. Lavoie had been assaulted. The pathologist attributed the cause of death to Mr. Lepage’s head wounds. Leading up to these events, the applicant Denver-Lambert had invited his neighbour, Pierre Lévesque, to steal money in the victims’ home. At trial, the applicant admitted that they had agreed on robbery, seizure and unlawful confinement by tying up, the applicant stated, however, that it was Pierre Lévesque that dealt the deadly blow to Mrs. Lavoie. The applicant and Lévesque were initially tried together in 2004 and found guilty of the murder of both victims. The Court of Appeal ordered a new trial in 2007 and both were subsequently tried separately. The present leave application deals with the second trial and appeal of the applicant.