Killer ex-doc Guy Turcotte to face second trial after Supreme Court rejects appeal
QMI Agency
Mar 20, 2014
, Last Updated: 10:33 AM ET
OTTAWA — A former heart specialist will face a second trial for killing his two young children after Canada's highest court rejected his appeal on Thursday.
The Supreme Court upheld a lower court's ruling that Guy Turcotte face a new trial.
He stabbed his son Olivier, 5, and daughter Anne-Sophie, 3, dozens of times in a rented home north of Montreal in February 2009.
The ex-cardiologist admitted during his first trial in 2011 that he killed his children.
A jury found him not criminally responsible for the gruesome killings, accepting his claim that he was suicidal and despondent because his marriage was crumbling and his wife slept with a friend.
The verdict provoked outrage across Canada, with some calling for the death penalty.
Turcotte spent just over a year in a Montreal mental hospital before he was released in December 2012.
He was re-arrested last November after the Quebec Court of Appeal granted the Crown's request to try Turcotte a second time.
Turcotte then appealed to the Supreme Court.
His case, and that of bus beheader Vince Li in Winnipeg, prompted the federal government to pass a new law that makes it more difficult to release people found not criminally responsible for serious crimes.
Killer ex-doc Guy Turcotte to face second trial after Supreme Court rejects appeal
Good.
QMI Agency
Mar 20, 2014
, Last Updated: 10:33 AM ET
OTTAWA — A former heart specialist will face a second trial for killing his two young children after Canada's highest court rejected his appeal on Thursday.
The Supreme Court upheld a lower court's ruling that Guy Turcotte face a new trial.
He stabbed his son Olivier, 5, and daughter Anne-Sophie, 3, dozens of times in a rented home north of Montreal in February 2009.
The ex-cardiologist admitted during his first trial in 2011 that he killed his children.
A jury found him not criminally responsible for the gruesome killings, accepting his claim that he was suicidal and despondent because his marriage was crumbling and his wife slept with a friend.
The verdict provoked outrage across Canada, with some calling for the death penalty.
Turcotte spent just over a year in a Montreal mental hospital before he was released in December 2012.
He was re-arrested last November after the Quebec Court of Appeal granted the Crown's request to try Turcotte a second time.
Turcotte then appealed to the Supreme Court.
His case, and that of bus beheader Vince Li in Winnipeg, prompted the federal government to pass a new law that makes it more difficult to release people found not criminally responsible for serious crimes.
Killer ex-doc Guy Turcotte to face second trial after Supreme Court rejects appeal
Good.
