An inmate at Quebec’s Orsainville jail convicted of murder has maintained his innocence for more than three decades.
Since 1994, Daniel Jolivet, a man in his 60s, has been serving a 25-year life sentence without the possibility of parole. He had been found guilty of the murders of Catherine Morin, Nathalie Beauregard, François Leblanc and Denis Lemieux, who were machine-gunned in a Brossard apartment on November 10, 1992.
Authorities then claimed that Jolivet wanted to settle scores with the two men involved in drug trafficking and concealment.
“I wasn’t the kind of person who went to church every day,” Daniel Jolivet admitted during his meeting with a reporter from CTV News, who will be presenting a documentary about him.
The client concerned claims that he has new evidence proving his innocence. The public prosecutor’s office had not presented him with certain evidence during the preparation of his trial.
However, nothing could physically link Jolivet to the murders. The conviction was based primarily on the testimony of whistleblower Claude Riendeau, a disgraced former police officer with a long criminal record, who claimed the defendant confessed to the murders hours after the crimes were committed. The inmate has always denied this discussion with Claude Riendeau.
Daniel Jolivet exercised his right to remain silent during his trial by refusing to testify. Today, his attorney, Me Lida Nouraie, is encouraging him to speak to the media from the heart.
“I want all of Canada to know my story,” said Daniel Jolivet, who passed a lie detector test in August 2020, according to Radio-Canada.
In 2000, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld Jolivet’s guilty verdict.