A 19-year-old man was sentenced to a 42-month prison term for the illegal possession of a loaded revolver on Friday after a Quebec Court judge dismissed the argument he had it for protection because his brother, a street gang member, had been killed only months earlier.
Jean-David Cesar appeared bored while Judge Yvan Poulin delivered the sentence at the Montreal courthouse. Cesar is the brother of Donald Cesar, a 22-year-old man who was killed in Montreal North on Sept. 3, 2015. The homicide occurred within the context of other street-gang-related shooting investigated by the Montreal police that summer. In May, 21-year-old Lentzky Xavier was charged in connection with Cesar’s slaying. His preliminary inquiry is set to begin in March.
When he was killed, some media outlets revealed Donald Cesar was the half-brother of Chenier (Big) Dupuy, a longtime street gang leader who was murdered in Anjou in 2012. Police sources have since speculated Dupuy was killed because he refused to be part of a partnership that eventually merged the Montreal Mafia with the Hells Angels and several Montreal street gangs.
Five months after Donald Cesar was killed, members of the Montreal police pulled over a car Jean-David Cesar was riding in with two other men. Cesar was arrested and, as part of the same investigation, the police searched his apartment in Montreal North. Inside the apartment, they found a loaded .357 Magnum revolver and a pound of marijuana.
During the trial last year, a friend of Cesar’s testified he was the person who actually owned the revolver. But after Cesar was convicted, his defence lawyer said Cesar kept the firearm for protection because his brother had been murdered the previous summer.
Poulin, who found Cesar guilty in October, rejected the argument his brother’s murder should serve as a mitigating factor in the gun-possession charge. The judge referred to a recent precedent in which an Ontario judge recommended stiff sentences for offenders in cases that involve the combination of firearms offences and drug trafficking.
Poulin also noted that at the time of his arrest, Cesar was subject to conditions from a sentence he received as a minor and should have been nowhere near a firearm. The judge noted Cesar’s criminal record as a minor included a conviction for a “group sexual assault.”
With time served factored into the sentence, Cesar was left with a 28-month prison term.
