Judge refuses to remove Randy Riley's lawyer from murder trial

Randy Riley gets to keep his lawyer for his second trial on a charge of second-degree murder in the decade-old killing of a man in Dartmouth, N.S.

The Crown had taken the highly-unusual step of trying to have Trevor McGuigan removed from the case. But in a decision Thursday morning, Nova Scotia Supreme Court Justice Denise Boudreau ruled against the Crown's application.

The reasons for the Crown's actions and the reasons behind the decision to keep McGuigain on the file are banned from publication to protect Riley's right to a fair trial.

Riley is facing the murder charge in the killing of Chad Smith, who was gunned down in north-end Dartmouth in October 2010.

Riley was found guilty of murder in a jury trial in 2018. He appealed that verdict all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, which last month overturned his conviction and ordered a new trial.

Smith was lured to his death under the pretence of delivering a pizza from the restaurant where he had just started working. 

Riley and another man, Nathan Johnson, were charged with the killing. Johnson was found guilty of first-degree murder and is serving a life sentence.

Johnson subsequently testified at Riley's first murder trial where he told the jury he had acted alone in the killing. Despite that evidence, the jury convicted Riley of murder.

Riley's case now joins a long queue of jury trials in the Halifax area that have been disrupted by COVID-19.

The Law Courts building in downtown Halifax cannot accommodate jury trials under pandemic restrictions. A new court facility that's being built in the Burnside Industrial Park in Dartmouth won't be ready until March. There are enough trials waiting to be scheduled to tie up the two new COVID courtrooms well into 2022.

However, Boudreau noted Thursday that with a vaccine finally available, it may be possible for jury trials to resume at the Law Courts some time next year, which would speed up the whole process.