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It’s been 20 years since Curtis Dagenais murdered two Saskatchewan RCMP officers and injured a third, but later this month he will be back in court in Saskatoon.
Why? It’s about his truck.
The 1986 blue GMC 1500 is still sitting in cold storage at RCMP headquarters in Regina. The Crown is applying to have it forfeited so it can be destroyed, but Dagenais is opposed.
Dagenais was in the truck on July 6, 2006, when three RCMP constables tried to arrest him in Spiritwood, about 147 kilometres north of Saskatoon. He drove off and led the officers, who were in two separate vehicles, on a chase over rural roads.
RCMP constables Marc Bourdages and Robin Cameron were in one vehicle, which rammed into the side of Dagenais’s truck and pushed it up against a tree. Dagenais shot them both in the head and they died of their injuries in hospital.
Const. Michelle Knopp arrived on the scene just moments after her colleagues were shot. Dagenais shot and injured her.
A jury convicted Dagenais in 2009 of two counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder. He received three sentences of life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years (the parole eligibility date is calculated from the date of his arrest on July 17, 2006).
He appealed the convictions to the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal, which dismissed his appeal in a ruling issued in 2012.
Why is the truck issue in court now?
The question of why the forfeiture application wasn’t made before was posed in court to Scott Bartlett, the Crown prosecutor who brought the application.
“I really can’t answer that, other than it slipped through the cracks,” Bartlett said.
Bartlett is one of the two prosecutors who ran the original trial in 2009. He first made the application for forfeiture in 2021, when it was heard by the trial judge, Justice Gerald Allbright, who is now retired.
(Bartlett said he is no longer employed full-time by public prosecutions, but still works under fee-for-service contracts as an agent for the Attorney General.)
At the hearing in 2021, Dagenais said he didn’t want the truck destroyed because he maintains he’s innocent and the bullet holes in the truck can help prove it.
He said he had asked Innocence Canada — a non-profit organization that advocates for the exoneration of people who are wrongfully convicted — to help him.
Dagenais was on Innocence Canada’s waiting list, and Allbright agreed to give Dagenais more time to see whether the organization would take on his case.
Allbright adjourned the Crown’s forfeiture application and said it could be renewed any time after Nov. 30, 2022.
“If at that time, no progress has been made in the advancement of Mr. Dagenais’s application to Innocence Canada, I am of the view that it would be appropriate for the court to make the forfeiture order which the Crown seeks,” Allbright wrote in a fiat.
Crown renews application
The Crown brought the application forward again in May of this year, and a hearing was held in Saskatoon Court of King’s Bench on June 25 — this time, in front of Justice Daryl Labach.
Dagenais, 61, attended by video conference from Saskatchewan Penitentiary, wearing a blue T-shirt and glasses. His short-cropped hair is greying at the temples.
Bartlett again represented the Crown, while Dagenais did not have a lawyer and represented himself.
Like he did in 2021, Dagenais said he was opposed to the forfeiture and destruction of the truck.
“I would like to keep it preserved,” he said.
“There’s a couple holes in that truck that can’t be properly re-examined by photograph.”
Labach noted that Innocence Canada had filed a letter with the court indicating they were not representing Dagenais and would not be pursuing any kind of application on his behalf.
Dagenais asked for another adjournment to see if he can get a lawyer to help him oppose the forfeiture application.
“How long are you suggesting it should be adjourned for?” Labach asked.
“I don’t know. The wheels seem to roll really slow around here,” Dagenais said.
Labach noted that Dagenais’s “only opportunity” to reopen his case would be an appeal to the minister of justice. He asked Bartlett for his thoughts.
Bartlett said Saskatchewan Justice has received “numerous requests, submissions” alleging Dagenais was wrongfully convicted and suggesting there was new evidence.
“Nothing of that has ever materialized or come to pass, in our opinion, and of course nothing has changed today,” Bartlett said.
Labach said he was prepared to grant Dagenais one more adjournment to give him the chance to get a lawyer.
The forfeiture hearing is scheduled for Aug. 31.
