Article content continued

The murders stunned Quebecers. The killer was a doctor, as was his estranged wife, Isabelle Gaston. Their relationship had been messy. They were separated. She was seeing someone else, and had been, for some time, at the time of the killings.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or

But these were Turcotte’s own children, and while his guilt for their murders was beyond question — he admitted killing them — a jury would find the physician to be not criminally responsible (NCR) due to a mental disorder at his initial trial in 2011.

The Quebec Court of Appeal overturned the verdict and ordered a new trial, a decision that reverberated through judicial circles, both because of its timing, and because it showed, in real time, that the law is fluid, evolving case by case.

“To overturn a verdict of not guilty, based on not criminally responsible (NCR) is extremely rare,” says Stéphane Beaulac, a law professor at the Universite de Montreal. “Even more rare, is for the decision to be based on a change or an adjustment of the law between the first trial and the appeal.”

In tossing out the lower court’s decision the appeal court had relied upon a Supreme Court of Canada judgment rendered just five months after the Turcotte case. In that ruling, the top court concluded that a defendant could indeed be mentally ill when he commits a crime and employ an NCR defence. But if he was incapacitated by intoxication — and not by a mental disorder — at the time of the murders, then the mental disorder defence should not be successful.