Case information

Criminal law — Charge to jury — Questions from jury — Manslaughter — Whether trial judge erred in his instructions and in his answer to questions from jury regarding offence of manslaughter, offence that appellant does not acknowledge having committed — Whether majority of Court of Appeal made reviewable error in declining to order new trial.<br>

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.

After a jury trial before Blanchard J. of the Superior Court, the appellant, Maxime Chicoine-Joubert, was convicted of one count of second degree murder and one count of assault with a weapon. On appeal, Mr. Chicoine-Joubert argued that the judge had erred in his instructions regarding manslaughter and in his answer to questions from the jury by failing to mention the necessary mens rea.

The Quebec Court of Appeal, for the reasons of Vauclair J.A., Hamilton J.A. concurring, dismissed Mr. Chicoine-Joubert’s appeal. It found that the instructions to the jury were correct in the context of the case. Since Mr. Chicoine-Joubert conceded his guilt for the manslaughter verdict, the question from the jury on that offence did not require that the judge address it. Bachand J.A., dissenting, would have allowed the appeal and ordered a new trial on the grounds that the trial judge had not adequately answered the questions from the jury and that there was a reasonable possibility that the jurors had misunderstood the requisite mens rea for second degree murder. Although the dissenting judge agreed with the majority that the initial instructions contained no error warranting the court’s intervention, he found that the trial judge had not fulfilled his obligation to answer questions from the jury clearly, correctly and comprehensively. He did not instruct the jurors on manslaughter or provide them with an example.