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Turcotte was found by a jury to be not criminally responsible for his acts because of his mental state.

The trial, which featured 10 weeks of heart-wrenching testimony at the St. Jerome, Que., courthouse, ended July 5 when a jury of 11 people came to the unanimous decision not to convict Turcotte, but rather send him to the Pinel Institute psychiatric treatment.

Normally a mental-health review panel of three professionals is given the mandate to determine the degree of danger that an inmate represents for society and whether he or she can be released from the psychiatric hospital. Given the complexity of Turcotte’s case, the panel was expanded to include five people: two lawyers, Medard Saucier and Lucien Leblanc; two psychiatrists, Georges Painchaud and Chantal Caron; and a social worker, Joseph Anglade.

The panel can release Turcotte with conditions, release him without conditions or order that he stay at Pinel indefinitely.

If either of the last two options is chosen, it will be reviewed annually by the board.

Lawyer Jean-Claude Hebert, spokesman for the Administrative Tribunal of Quebec on the case, said the panel “will take the whole file into consideration — the police investigation, the elements of proof produced at the trial, the opinions of all the experts, all the other proof from the trial.”

Isabelle Gaston, Turcotte’s ex-wife and the mother of the slain children, could also present a victim-impact statement.

The panel could take weeks, if not months, to reach a decision on Turcotte’s ability to rejoin society.

In the meantime, the Crown has sought leave to appeal the verdict in Turcotte’s trial, because it says Justice Marc David erred in his instructions to the jury and may have unduly influenced jury members to find Turcotte not guilty by reason of mental disorder.

Montreal Gazette