A murder case over assisted dying divides Quebec. Should the law be changed?

MONTREAL — The prosecution arrived first, in black robes with white bibs, wheeling boxes of evidence behind them.

Then came the defense team, public defenders, also in robes. There was the accused, Michel Cadotte, 56, who sometimes hung his pen or pencil from the collar of his T-shirt as he walked slowly to and from his pre-trial hearing this week. There was his sister. And there was the sister of the woman that Cadotte allegedly killed.

It might seem strange for them to have arrived together, but they are family. Cadotte was charged with the second-degree murder of his wife of 19 years, Jocelyne Lizotte, who had Alzheimer’s disease. His lawyers have argued that it was an act of compassion, and his late wife’s sister testified at his bail hearing in June so that he could be released.

The judge imposed a publication ban on any of the evidence presented during this week’s hearing. But the bare bones of the case are already familiar all over the province of Québec, where they have helped spark a debate over whether to liberalize the province’s new physician-assisted dying law.

Cadotte had been caring for his wife since her symptoms in 2006. The work, he , had caused him to lose jobs. He’d expressed exhaustion, and worry that the center where she ended up living was not providing proper support. She had made a request for medical aid-in-dying, which neither Québécois nor Canadian law would