Advocate's romance with prosecutor halts criminal case in Canada

In Montreal (Quebec, Canada), a court suspended proceedings against eight defendants accused of illegal cannabis trafficking and money laundering after it was revealed that the prosecutor in the case and one of the advocates were in a secret intimate relationship.

The story of the extramarital affair between the lawyers and its consequences is recounted by the Canadian English-language publication Montreal Gazette.

High Court Judge Gregory Moore noted that suspending the proceedings was a last resort, but that he saw no other appropriate solution in the circumstances. In its decision, the court also focused on the implications for the defendants' right to choose their defense counsel and on trust in the justice system as a whole.

Prosecutor Alice Bourbonnais-Rougeau and defence lawyer Mathieu Rondeau-Poissant had a secret relationship while on «opposite sides» in ongoing criminal proceedings. However, the obvious conflict of interest in these circumstances was not properly disclosed to the defendants.

In assessing the conduct of the parties, the judge mentioned several times that the advocate had given false testimony under oath during court proceedings last year. The prosecutor was dismissed from her position in November; the court concluded that she had provided false information during her official explanations to management.

According to the evidence gathered, the procedural opponents exchanged more than 6,000 text messages over eight months. Some of them concerned discussions of events in the case. In one episode, the advocate apologized to the prosecutor for his behavior during negotiations on possible guilty pleas, in which other advocates participated, and admitted that he should have been «softer».

The court also noted that Bourbonnais-Rougeau had deleted all messages exchanged with Rondo-Poisson from her phone. Against this background, the judge emphasized that the defendants would not be able to establish the actual amount of confidential information that could have been disclosed. The court found the assurances of both lawyers that the confidential information had not been disclosed to be unreliable.

The judge placed particular emphasis on the fact that the situation deprived the defendant of the opportunity to make an informed choice of defense counsel. The judge also linked the concealment of the conflict of interest to the undermining of public confidence in the integrity of the justice system. In his opinion, when a prosecutor creates a conflict of interest, conceals information, misleads colleagues, and destroys evidence, it undermines the ability of the judicial system to act as a reliable and trustworthy mechanism for considering criminal charges.