Claude Paquin, a man from Quebec who was wrongly convicted of a double murder and later acquitted after 41 years, has agreed to a multimillion-dollar settlement with Montreal and the provincial government. The settlement was announced jointly by the three parties on Friday. The City of Montreal and the Attorney General of Quebec expressed their hopes that this agreement would help Mr. Paquin move on from this challenging period in his life without a lengthy trial.
In 1983, Paquin was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder in connection with the deaths of Ronald Bourgouin and Sylvie Revah, a couple who were killed in the Laurentians in 1978. He served 18 years in prison before being released on full parole in 2001 under strict conditions that lasted for the next 23 years. In 2024, the federal justice minister ordered a retrial due to new information in the case suggesting a potential miscarriage of justice. Paquin, who is now 83 years old, was acquitted on November 6, 2024.
Paquin attributed his acquittal to the efforts of his legal team from Projet Innocence Québec. The case against him heavily relied on the testimony of Bernard Provençal, a prominent police informant. However, evidence uncovered by Projet Innocence Québec over the years raised doubts about his credibility.
Represented by lawyers from Woods LLP, Paquin filed a multimillion-dollar civil lawsuit in Quebec Superior Court in May 2025 against the City of Montreal and the Attorney General of Quebec, alleging failures on the part of their agents, including the Montreal police, the Sûreté du Québec, and the Quebec Crown prosecutor’s office. The lawsuit claimed that police and prosecutors knew as early as 1983 that the informant’s testimony was false and that the physical evidence linking Paquin to the crime had been manipulated or fabricated.
The lawsuit described Paquin’s ordeal as more than a miscarriage of justice, portraying it as a stolen life with a sentence that extended beyond prison walls. His legal team argued that he endured the longest unjustified deprivation of liberty ever documented in Quebec. While the lawsuit sought damages of over $89 million, the exact settlement amount remains confidential due to the agreement reached by the parties. As the lawsuit was settled out of court, its claims were not litigated, and the parties have chosen not to provide further details.