Quebec’s top prosecutor has finally received a report on the internal probe she ordered last year to find out how a failure to turn over evidence to defence lawyers caused a murder trial involving five Hells Angels to be aborted.
The Directeur des poursuites criminelles et pénales (DPCP) announced Thursday that its director, Annick Murphy, now has the report she ordered in October 2015, days after Superior Court Justice James Brunton ruled the prosecution in the case violated the rights of the five men on trial for murder by failing to disclose evidence to their lawyers until the trial was well underway.
Brunton ordered a stay of proceedings on the charges against all five accused who were alleged to be members or retired members of the biker gang. The case was part of Operation SharQc, an investigation that targeted more than 150 people including almost every member of the Hells Angels in Quebec.
Murphy also pledged, last year, to make the report’s conclusions public.
According to Thursday’s statement, Murphy remains committed to making the conclusions public, “subject to the possible impact they could have on current (court) proceedings. However, before making the conclusions public, (Murphy) has to, in all fairness, meet with the prosecutors involved. These meetings will be held over the course of the next two weeks and, following that, the director will make the conclusions of the administrative investigation public.”
