March 12-20, 2007 Court Hearings

Court begins 10:00 AM daily at the Superior Court of Ontario, 216 Water Street, Kenora Ontario.

March 12 - Today's hearing was delayed due to an extended sentencing hearing. By the time everyone was searched and entered the court, it was well after 3:30 PM. The Crown, Mr. Peter Keen challenged our two main expert witnesses on the grounds that their testimony is opinion which is based on unqualified facts. We'll proceed tomorrow at 10:00 AM with evidence to the contrary.

March 13 - Today court started on time at 10:00 AM. As anticipated we spent the whole day dealing with submissions from Mr. Martin and Mr. Keen regarding the admissibility of evidence from Dr. Gary Mauser. Mr. Keen had lots of arguments to show that the judge should not accept Dr. Mauser's evidence, including consideration of the reliability, relevance and expert status of the evidence. Court resumes at 10:00 AM tomorrow.

March 14 - Court resumed at 10:00 AM. First off judge Wright agreed to extend the hearings into next week in order to provide sufficient time to deal with the constitutional issues. We spent the whole morning working through Mr. Keen's further arguments to dismiss the expert evidence of Professor Mauser. This afternoon Calvin Martin made a final submission susbstantiating Professor Mauser's expert status, and we began working through issues of David Tomlinson's admissibility as an expert witness.

March 15 - Today the court finally finished hearing submissions by the crown to discredit our expert witnesses. Calvin Martin then pointed out some discrepancies in the crown's critique of Mr. Tomlinson's analysis of the Firearms Control regulations. Late in the afternoon we moved onto submissions regarding the affidavits of the crown witnesses. The judge will decide which material from the expert witnesses should be admissible. Court is cancelled tomorrow, and resumes on Monday at 10:00 AM when we hope to begin presenting constitutional arguments.

March 19 - Court was delayed due to a snow storm. Justice Wright delivered his decision about expert witnesses, declaring Dr. Gary Mauser's evidence admissible if it's shown to be relevant, and Dave Tomlinson's inadmissiable because he's a biased advocate for the firearms cause. Calvin began his arguments before we finished for the day about 5:00 PM.

March 20 - Tuesday's proceedings dealt with arranging an ajournment. Read more about it in this news report: Court Proceedings Delayed »