Lawyers for influential members of Montreal organized crime suspected of having been involved in the murder of gang leader Arsène Mompoint have failed in their attempt to limit the length of time during which police officers will be able to keep property seized from their clients.
Last December, Sûreté du Québec investigators, who are looking into the murder of Mompoint committed in Kanesatake on July 1, 2021, seized, in bulk, 32 cell phones, a hard drive, tablets, luxury watches and even firearms in three individuals whom the police link to the Montreal mafia, Pietro D’Adamo, Vito Salvaggio and Davide Barberio, and three others from gangs: Jean-Philippe Célestin, Dany Sprinces Cadet and Emmanuel Zéphir.
Following a search, the police can keep the seized property for at least three months. But if they want to extend the retention periods for seized property, they must then go to a judge.
However, the Prosecution requested last March for an additional period of one year, which is the maximum period for such a request, but the request was contested by the lawyers of the individuals targeted by the searches.
The Crown notably pleaded the complexity of the current investigation and the length and difficulties of the technological steps aimed at gaining access to the data contained in the phones.
For its part, the Defense said it feared that such a long extension of detention of seized property would be arbitrary, since investigators do not know if they will be able to open the still inaccessible phones, and that it would cause a spirit of complacency among investigators who would be less eager to complete their investigation.
By early April, data from half of the 32 seized phones had been successfully extracted by police.
In a decision rendered Tuesday, Judge Dennis Galiatsatos of the Court of Quebec granted the motion and authorized the detention of the property in question until March 7, 2025.
The magistrate concludes that the items seized are relevant to the investigation, that it is complex and that with 30 investigators assigned to the investigation, the police are showing that they are not dragging their feet.
“Given the number of devices analyzed and the volume of data, considerable time is required to analyze and cross-check it within the rest of the evidence. According to the personal experience of (the investigator who testified), a single device can take about a month,” the judge wrote in his decision.
Even if the magistrate agrees with the Prosecution, he nevertheless criticizes it, saying that the evidence concerning the pending proceedings “leaves something to be desired”.
The judge would have liked an employee of the SQ Technology Module to have testified to obtain “informed answers about what remains to be done, what can still be done and what seems to be concretely impossible.”
