Christopher McDonald, who is set to be retried for the 2008 death of a Guelph woman, appeared in a Guelph court Friday.
The reason was to hear motions regarding McDonald's upcoming retrial in the first degree murder of Corrine Burns.
Details of Friday's court hearing are under a publication ban. McDonald will be back in court on Thursday for a continuation of the proceedings.
McDonald was found guilty of first degree murder and aggravated sexual assault in 2012 and sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.
But the conviction was overturned by the Ontario Court of Appeal and the retrial granted on the grounds that the original trial judge erred in his final charge to the jury and erred in allowing evidence from a subsequent assault conviction McDonald had in Barrie following the death of Burns but before his arrest for her murder.
The naked and badly beaten body of Burns was found on the morning of May 27, 2008, by a Grade 8 student playing a game of hide-and-seek in Norm Jary Park in the city’s west end.
Following the end of his four-week trial in 2012, it took a jury just five hours to find him guilty.
At sentencing Justice Jack Belleghem called McDonald “brutally sadistic.”
Burn's body was found in a wooded area of the park, apparently having been dragged there.
Semen was found on her body that matched the DNA profile of McDonald, as did organic material found under one of her fingernails.
Burns’ body contained a “potentially lethal” level of cocaine that a forensic toxicologist testified was in excess of what would be considered a level associated with recreational use.
The exact cause of death was never identified. The pathologist that conducted the postmortem testified that there was more than one possible explanation for why she died, including strangulation or a cocaine overdose.
The appeal court found that the trial judge failed to give “enough attention” to the cause of death when giving his final charge to the jury and that he failed to point out evidence that showed it was unlikely a blow to the head was the sole cause of death.
McDonald did not testify at his murder trial.
