After a two-day preliminary hearing, a judge has decided the case against London Mayor Joe Fontana will go to trial.
Asked how he was feeling as he was leaving the court Fontana responded “More confident than ever.”
On Tuesday the court heard from two more witnesses from Ottawa before the judge announced his decision.
Justice Ronald Marion concurred with the Crown and defence in sending the case to trial saying “I agree there is sufficient evidence to proceed.”
Fontana’s defence attorney Gord Cudmore explains “The test is minimal, the test is, if there’s any evidence at all which if it was believed might lead to a verdict, you go to trial. Credibility, things of that nature, don’t matter and we don’t enter a defence at this time.”
Fontana was charged by the RCMP in November 2012 with fraud under $5,000, breach of trust by a public official and uttering forged documents.
The charges relate to accusation the then Liberal MP used a $1,700 federal check to pay the deposit on a room at the Marconi Club for his son’s wedding reception.
Cudmore says the next step will be going to the assignment court in the Superior Court of Justice on November 19th to set a pre-trial date and hopefully a trial date as well.
He expects the trial will last three to four days, and hopes the case is wrapped up well ahead of a municipal election slated for November 2014.
The defence also plans to proceed with a judge alone “This has been a highly publicized trial, it’s harder to pick a jury of 12 impartial people, I’m not suggesting for a second that we couldn’t do it, but it is harder and trials don’t take as long to conduct in front of a judge alone as they do with juries.”
Cudmore adds “We’re still waiting for our day in court when we can present our side of the case and we’re well on the way to that happening now.”
All of the evidence presented at the pre-trial hearing is subject to a publication ban and cannot be reported.
