Case of former Quebec judge accused of killing wife to end with guilty plea

A retired Quebec judge who was facing a second murder trial in his wife’s 2009 shooting death will enter a guilty plea.

Crown prosecutor François Godin made the announcement in a hearing Wednesday at the courthouse in Quebec City, but he did not disclose what charge Jacques Delisle would admit to.

Delisle’s lawyer could not immediately be reached for comment, but Patricia Johnson, a spokesperson for the Quebec prosecution service, confirmed that a guilty plea will be entered at a hearing for the former judge on Thursday morning.

Delisle was first convicted in 2012 of fatally shooting his wife, Marie Nicole Rainville, and was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.

The 88-year-old former Quebec Court of Appeal judge spent nine years behind bars before being freed in 2021 when the federal justice minister ordered a new trial after reviewing evidence and concluding a miscarriage of justice had likely occurred.

Delisle has maintained that he found his wife already dead of an apparent suicide when he walked into the condo they shared in Quebec City on Nov. 12, 2009.