Hearing in murder case delayed due to pandemic
A man who has spent more than two years behind bars awaiting trial on a second-degree murder charge may not be able to schedule a hearing for his case until the fall, due to COVID-19 restrictions.
A preliminary hearing for Shaun Fitzsimons, 37, was originally set to begin Monday in an Ontario Court of Justice in St. Catharines.
That court date was set in July 2019, long before the global pandemic began.
While Ontario courts continue to hear urgent matters, bail hearings and pleas for accused people in custody, trial matters and preliminary hearings have been temporarily postponed.
Jury trials in Superior Court have also been cancelled until at least September.
In court Monday, Judge Joseph De Filippis suggested Fitzsimons’s matter be adjourned until mid-June as the Chief Justice
of the Ontario Court of Justice is expected to update directives on the restrictions in the coming weeks.
“I’m hopeful that there’s going to be some relaxing of the restrictions that we are having to live with now,” the judge said.
Fitzsimons’s lawyer, Jordana Goldlist, agreed to adjourn the matter to June in order to get further information from the courts.
“In the interim, I may look to other processes available,” she said.
“I think there’s a larger issue at play when you have accused persons who have been in custody for 25 months and they have no routes to not guilty. I have to consider my advocacy on behalf of Mr. Fitzsimons in that regard.”
Fitzsimons was arrested April 15, 2018, after 60-year-old Glen Hewer was found lying on a sidewalk on Queenston Street in St. Catharines.
Another high-profile case was also put on hold Monday due to the pandemic.
Patrick McCabe, 21, was scheduled to answer to several charges including dangerous operation of a motor vehicle causing death. Due to current restrictions, the Pelham man’s matter was also adjourned until June.
He was arrested in August 2019 after a 33-year-old migrant worker was killed in a hitand-run incident in Niagaraon-the-Lake.