The court of appeal accepted the argument of Crown Attorney France Charbonneau that Justice Boilard had displayed such an outrageous professional-defence bias that a brand new trial was required. Throughout the trial, Justice Boilard displayed a powerful bias in favour of the defence and promptly agreed to Larochelle’s request to exclude five tapes of intercepted cellphone calls made by Boucher, which weakened the Crown’s case. Boucher did not see fit to testify in his own defence. If you’re with a pal or associate, you may want to arrange beforehand to have a check-in time at a specified time and placement, simply to see how you’re every doing. Boucher’s friend who was struggling with the mortgage was a man who had associations with the Rizzuto family and was not a Hells Angel. The assembly was not friendly as Boucher requested Desjardins to forgive a $400,000 mortgage with 52% interest that a good friend of his had taken out with Desjardins and was struggling to repay, a request that Desjardins refused out of hand. We all know-and all folks know-so many specimens of this class, that in selecting the few heads our limits allow us to take from an amazing number, we have been induced to give the very pleasant young gentleman the preference over many others, to whose claims upon a extra cursory view of the query we had felt disposed to assign the priority.

On the night of 27 November 1998, to have a good time his acquittal, Boucher attended a boxing match with his fellow Nomads, with the audience cheering him as he took his seat and a whole bunch of people lining up to get his autograph. This section might contain an excessive quantity of intricate element that will curiosity solely a particular audience. On 21 June 2000, the Nomads Normand Robitaille, André Chouinard and Michel Rose met Rizzuto to agree on the worth of a kilo of cocaine in Quebec: $50,000, and with a penalty of death for anybody who sold beneath that amount. On 27 April 2000, Desjardins was murdered in a really professional killing while leaving Shawn’s, with an assassin placing 11 bullets into his back as he was getting into his automotive. On 13 September 2000, Auger was shot 5 times within the back while opening the trunk of his automobile within the parking lot of Le Journal de Montréal, and was almost killed.

On 10 October 2000, a Montreal appeals choose overruled double jeopardy, declaring that the Crown had introduced credible evidence that the 1998 trial of Boucher was marred by intimidation of the jury and that Justice Boilard’s directions to the jury had been defective, and as such, Boucher ought to be retried for the murders of Lavigne and Rondeau. In October 2000, a bar proprietor in the town of Terrebonne named Francis Laforest refused to permit the Rowdy Ones, a puppet club of the Hells Angels, to sell drugs in his bar. Desjardins’s business associate Robert Savard was killed on 7 July 2000 after having breakfast with Boucher on the previous day and by October 2000, there had been eleven murders of “impartial” gangsters not with the Rizzuto household who had previously been allies of the Hells Angels. On eight October 2000 to rejoice Thanksgiving, Boucher and Faucher had dinner together at Bleu Martin restaurant and while a photographer from Allô Police tabloid recorded the scene, the leaders of the Hell’s Angels and the Rock Machine exchanged handshakes, hugged and broke bread together (a common symbol in French-Canada of reconciliation). However, critics noted that both Reno and Ferland had been paid $1 million for performing at Charlebois’s marriage ceremony, suggesting that was the actual motive for his or her willingness to affiliate with the Hell’s Angels, instead of their professed ignorance.

Reno stated in her defence: “Jesus hung around with dangerous folks. Are they killers and criminals 24 hours a day? You can’t be rotten from morning till night time”. Both Ferland and Reno later claimed that they were unaware that the Hells Angels were one of the vital feared criminal syndicates in Quebec on the time they attended the marriage. Boucher was carried out of the courtroom on the shoulders of his fellow Hells Angels while Commander Bouchard, who was present within the courtroom, appeared very glum at the sight. After the appeals choose undid double jeopardy, Commander Bouchard had Boucher arrested leaving a restaurant to be charged as soon as once more for two counts of first diploma homicide for the killings of Rondeau and Lavigne. The choose overseeing Boucher’s trial, Justice Jean-Guy Boilard, had overseen the trial of Réjean Lessard and the men chargeable for the Lennoxville massacre in 1986, and is known because the “most generally feared choose in Quebec’s criminal courts”, given to bullying lawyers and witnesses. Those associated with the justice system described Boucher’s “folk hero” status as reflecting the ethical decay of Quebecois society.