THE Junior of the world The trial for sexual assault will only carry out the judge after the jury was dismissed early Friday.
Ontario Superior Court judge Maria Carroccia made the decision shortly after the legal proceedings for the day.
“I determined in this case that the jury should be released,” Carroccia told the jury, thanking the 14 members and rejecting them.
The jury had spent the last two and a half weeks In a courtroom in London in Ontario, hearing proof of the crown in the case, including more than a week of testimonies from the complainant at the center of allegations against five former members of the world’s junior hockey team.
Michael McLeod, Carter Hart, Alex formenton, Dillon Dube and Callan Fote all pleaded not guilty of accusations of sexual assault resulting from what the allege crown was a non -consensual group gender in the House of McLeod at the Delta hotel in London in June 2018.
The woman, whose identity is protected by a ban on standard publication and is identified as EM in court documents, testified for two days before facing a sometimes tense lawyer for defense lawyers for each of the accused. She was allowed to finish testifying on Wednesday.
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The former member of the World Juniors team, Tyler Steenbergen, who was not charged, testified for a second day on Thursday when the procedure was interrupted.
The jury was dismissed because a juror sent to the judge a note declaring that they thought that the lawyers of Form, Daniel Brown and Hillary Dudding, “would turn against each other and laughed as if they were discussing our appearance” when the jury entered the room.
The judge said that she feared that this could have an impact on the capacity of certain members of the jury to decide this affair fairly and that it could have a scary effect on defense lawyers.
In a statement, Brown and Dudding described the juror’s note an “unhappy erroneous interpretation”.
“No defense lawyer would risk alienating a juror, and nothing could be further away from the truth in this case,” the lawyers said.
“The very idea that the advice shedding light on a juror is illogical and takes place directly against our goal and our function.”
Brown and Dudding added the decision to a trial solely to the judge was “a regrettable development for Mr. Fortment”, who had “wanted to be tried by a jury of his peers”, but expressed his confidence that Carroccia “will ensure a complete and equitable procedure”.
A trial was declared at the end of April to only three days after a new procedure, a new jury selected a few hours later. At that time, the crown had presented its declaration of opening and began to expose its evidence in the case.
Global News can now indicate that the judge has declared a trial by concern that the first jury was tainted.
A member of this jury accused the ramp of having launched an online conversation for lunch. Dudding denied this and said that any contact with the juror was inadvertently.
Fudding and Brown refused to comment on the trial when they were asked on Friday by journalists.
The transition to a trial only of the judge means that the case can take place without having to start again as it did after the declaration of the trial. This means that the complainant will no longer have to testify.
Steenbergen resumed his testimony on Friday after the release of the jury.
The test should last a total of eight weeks.
– with Jeff Semple de Global files
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