The court procedings for Sudbury contractor David Murray continued on Jan. 7, with little progress made.
Murray was scheduled for a judicial pre-trial on Tuesday, but that did not go ahead. Instead, his court appearance was used to better organize his charges in order to have all of his fraud charges dealt with as one matter.
The embattled contractor was charged with fraud over $5,000 and fraud under $5,000 on two separate occasions last year, bringing a total of 45 fraud charges against him (34 fraud over $5,000, 11 fraud under $5,000).
A Crown attorney had to be brought up from Toronto to deal with Murray's charges, as one of the complainants against Murray works at the local Crown office, a potential conflict of interest.
"The Crown attorney looked at the file and in order to keep all of the matters in the same court he wants to get rid of the fraud unders (fraud under $5,000)," said detective cst. Andy Williams, the lead investigator on Murray's case.
"What we did is we date range them; so between this date and this date he committed a count of fraud over, so all of the victims of the various fraud unders become witnesses to the fraud over ($5,000)."
These are not new charges laid against Murray, but rather one additional charge of fraud over $5,000, compiled from the 11 fraud under $5,000 charges, meaning he is now facing 35 charges of fraud over $5,000.
"It's all of the same charges, they've just changed the wording on it," said Williams.
"A lot of times that happens before it even gets to a first appearance and the Crown will look at it and say they don't want to prosecute it that way. But because (Murray) was first charged in May and now we have an out of town Crown that only came on in December, he's the one prosecuting it and he's playing catch up now."
Williams was in attendance at Murray's scheduled judicial pre-trial on Jan. 7, but nothing went forward in that regard.
"We didn't really go ahead with it because he is still in the midst of obtaining legal counsel," said Williams. "On the 21st we're going to find out if that counsel has been obtained or not and then push ahead."
Murray was approved for legal aid late last year, but currently does not have a defense lawyer on record as his counsel for the fraud charges.
