Court rejects appeal of North Bay-area man's first-degree murder conviction

In a decision released Aug. 20, the Court of Appeal for Ontario rejected an appeal from lawyers for Marc Gauthier, who murdered his girlfriend in Sturgeon Falls in November 2017. The court upheld his conviction for first-degree murder. (File)

An Ontario court has rejected an appeal by a northern Ont. man who brutally killed his girlfriend in November 2017.

Lawyers for Marc Gauthier sought to overturn his conviction for first-degree murder and have the court order a new trial.

Gauthier was found guilty in March 2020 of murdering his girlfriend in an apartment in Sturgeon Falls. The Crown argued there was sufficient evidence Gauthier had planned the killing and the jury found him guilty of first-degree murder.

But his lawyers launched an appeal on two grounds: that a voicemail admitted as evidence should have been excluded, and that confessions made to police and correctional officers weren't properly scrutinized before they were admitted.

In a decision released Aug. 20, the Court of Appeal for Ontario ruled both arguments were not sufficient to change the outcome.

At the original trial, the victim's sister testified that Gauthier had been verbally abusive to the victim in the days leading up to her death.

"She was afraid, upset about his drug use, and wanted to move away from him," the appeals court decision said.

"On the night of Nov. 14, 2017, the appellant’s neighbours heard sounds of an argument and a fight emanating from his apartment. The police eventually arrived. They forced entry into the apartment and found the appellant inside."

They also found the body of the victim, who had been beaten, strangled and stabbed several times.

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Police had difficulty entering the apartment because Gauthier barricaded the door by nailing a board across it from the inside.

It emerged during the trial that the night before the murder, he called his physician and left a long, rambling voicemail in which he talked about killing his girlfriend and keeping police out by barricading the door.

The doctor's staff didn't listen to the voicemail until the day after the murder but called police immediately when they heard it.

Police arrived at the office, "listened to the message and seized an audio recording of the message, without a warrant," the appeals court decision said.

Right to privacy

In the appeal, Gauthier's lawyers argued that his right to privacy was violated when police copied the message and used it at the trial. Therefore, it should have been excluded from the evidence.

The court ruled that people do have a right to privacy in medical communications, but the voicemail in question was something different: it was part of Gauthier's ongoing harassment of his physician.

"I agree with the trial judge that there was no reasonable expectation of privacy in a voicemail that the trial judge described as threatening and harassing," the appeals judge wrote.

"In this case, the appellant left a voicemail that was part of an overall pattern of harassment of (the doctor) and her staff. Indeed, the appellant was consequently charged with criminal harassment."

And the judge said previous court decisions have held there is no expectation of privacy when electronic messages "are used as the means of committing the offence charged, such as the offence of threatening to cause death or bodily harm, or criminal harassment."

The second ground of appeal involved two police officers and a correctional officer, who testified that Gauthier admitted to them that he had killed his girlfriend.

Confessed to police

"The police officers who heard one of them made late entries of this statement in their notes on the next day, and the correctional officer who heard the other statement acknowledged that his notes could have been written later than he estimated and that he inserted an additional detail later," the appeals court decision said.

"The appellant argues the trial judge erred by concluding that the Crown met the very high burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the statements were made voluntarily."

In this instance, the appeals court agreed, but said the trial judge's error "was of no consequence" to the outcome of the trial.

That's because whether Gauthier killed his girlfriend was not in dispute. Other witnesses testified that Gauthier stuck his head out of the window the night of the murder and yelled for someone to call 911 because "she's dead."

The appeal was based on whether Gauthier was guilty of first-degree murder – which involves planning to kill someone before committing the crime – not whether he had committed the crime.

The admission to the police officers that he killed his girlfriend did not include evidence of planning.

"This error could not possibly have impacted the jury’s verdict," the appeals court judge ruled.

"In my view, the statements say nothing about planning or premeditation, or forcible confinement and their introduction could not have impacted the verdict of first-degree murder. Consequently, I would dismiss this ground of appeal."