A killer is found not criminally responsible. The Crown and defence agree the system is broken

Warning: This story contains details of murder and mental illness.

For defence lawyer Marni Munsterman, the "discomforting and alarming" detail that stood out in the large volume of evidence about Adam Rossi — who was found not criminally responsible on Friday of the second-degree murder of Sommer Boudreau, and interfering with her remains, in the Ottawa Valley a year ago — was one of his more recent hospitalizations.

That hospitalization, for mania stemming from his bipolar disorder, occurred before he killed Boudreau, 39, in his duplex in Deep River, Ont., in early December 2022.

A psychiatrist was contemplating a community treatment order for Rossi with long-acting injectable medication, something that could have helped after he kept deciding to stop taking the antipsychotic pills that court heard quickly eased his symptoms.

"For whatever reason, that didn't happen," Munsterman said.

She called it a "travesty," and said it shows "how broken our system truly has become" in providing support to people with mental illness.

Crown prosecutor James Bocking, after going through Rossi's 10 most previous hospitalizations — to gasps from Boudreau's family and supporters in the gallery — said his mental health records read like "a freight train to inevitability."

"I defy anyone to read them and think otherwise," Bocking said.

But the knowledge that Rossi is unwell "brings no solace" to the Boudreau family and "changes nothing" for them, he added.

"They are still casualties, and maybe Mr. Rossi is too, of a system and a decadent philosophy that places an emphasis of the paramountcy of the rights of the individual over all else," Bocking said.

They were the kind of comments not typically heard from lawyers in court, and Superior Court Justice Ian Carter made note of it in his brief remarks near the end of Friday's hearing at the Renfrew County courthouse in Pembroke, Ont.

He thanked counsel for "stepping outside their normal roles" and speaking "from their hearts about what they've seen in the system."

Sommer Boudreau's mother, Carrie Boudreau, her brother Christopher Halliday, two of her three children — Tyee and Tia Boudreau — and about a dozen other supporters sighed audibly, cried, leaned on each other's shoulders and reached out to hold hands throughout the proceeding. 

Some wore T-shirts emblazoned with Sommer Boudreau's picture and the words "Justice for Sommer," and all wore purple ribbons honouring victims of violence against women.