The two men charged with killing Jamie Leard will skip a preliminary enquiry and instead go straight to trial, but not for another 18 months.
Henry Pottie and Sean Patterson were in a Moncton courtroom on Monday to set the date for their first degree murder trial for the killing of Jamie Leard on May 25 in Upper Cape, between Port Elgin and Cape Tormentine.
According to Craig Babstock of the Times and Transcript, Judge Robert Dysart set the date for April 17, 2023 when earlier dates were not workable for one of the defense lawyers.
Eighteen months may seem like a long time to wait for a trial, but the wait might have been longer had a week-long preliminary enquiry originally scheduled for January gone ahead, and then a trial scheduled.
And the delay keeps the trial within a “reasonable” time frame, according to the Supreme Court of Canada.
In 2016, the Supreme Court set limits on the amount of time a person could wait to be tried for a crime before their rights were violated. For crimes tried in provincial court, that limit is 18 months from the time the charge is laid. But cases tried in New Brunswick’s superior court, such as the Court of Queens Bench, can take up to 30 months to complete proceedings.
Pottie and Patterson will be tried in the Court of Queen’s Bench in April 2023. The trial is scheduled to last for eight weeks, which takes it in to June 2023, just over 24 months after Jamie Leard was killed, and the two were charged with first degree murder.
