The perpetrator of a 2016 Montreal bank robbery worthy of a Hollywood scenario was declared a dangerous offender on Friday. Alain Ste-Marie, a repeat offender, may never be released from prison as he was sentenced to an indeterminate sentence.
Posted at 4:32 p.m.
“This measure is essential to protect society and possible victims from the harmful risks arising from the irreducibility of the impulsive and violent behavior of the defendants,” concluded Judge Mario Longpré on Friday at the Gouin Justice Center.
The affair caused a stir in September 2016. Alain Ste-Marie and his partner robbed a bank on rue Bernard in Outremont in broad daylight. His accomplice stood guard while he robbed the bank. Then they jumped into a taxi.
The police were on his trail when Alain Ste-Marie threw the driver out of the taxi, then got behind the wheel and caused an accident on Rue Saint-Urbain. The tension reached its peak when a police officer pointed his pistol at Ste-Marie just a few yards away.
Still, the robber managed to escape through an alleyway and then elude the police, despite Mile-End’s tight security borders. While hiding in an apartment, the criminal made a fatal mistake: he drank a soft drink and a bottle of rum to pass the time. His DNA was found there.
Alain Ste-Marie was found guilty in his first trial and was able to obtain a new trial because the judge failed to grant his request for a jury trial. In 2020, he was finally found guilty by a jury at the end of his second trial.
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Alain Ste-Marie (photographed here in 2007)
Three-year process
The process then dragged on for three years and a whopping 48 court hearings. Alain Ste-Marie then tried to get a reduced sentence, citing delays after the sentencing. Alain Ste-Marie, acting mostly alone, submitted an “impressive” number of written motions.
“The defendant is primarily responsible for the delays caused,” the judge concludes.
Alain Ste-Marie, 52, is a career criminal: he has been convicted on 107 separate counts, including 12 robberies. His risk of violent relapse is high, experts say, citing his personality disorder and lack of remorse.
“The repetition of violent acts by the defendant tends to demonstrate the irreducibility of his violent behavior and the marked indifference to the reasonably foreseeable consequences that his actions may have on the victims, which increases the high risk of harmful recidivism,” analyzes Judge Longpre.
Prosecutors Philippe Vallières-Roland and Khalid A. Alguima led the case for the prosecutor.