Following pretrial motions on Monday, trial dates for the man accused of murdering Renée Sweeney have been rescheduled for February 2023.
Robert Steven Wright, 42, was scheduled to go to trial in September. Wright's counsel, Micheal Lacy, tells Village Media in an email his busy schedule is the reason for the delay.
“I can confirm the trial had to be adjourned in order to accommodate my schedule,” wrote Lacy.
He says when September was originally targeted as the date to start Wright’s trial, it was done so with the knowledge Lacy had a lengthy matter scheduled in another jurisdiction.
“There was some hope that the other matter might not go ahead, but, unfortunately, as of Monday it is still scheduled,” says Lacy. “Accordingly, we had to adjourn the Wright matter.”
The matter will return to court on April 25 to confirm trial dates.
Wright is charged with second-degree murder in the 1998 stabbing death of Sweeney. He has been in custody since he was arrested in December 2018 in North Bay where he had been living and working.
Wright was scheduled to start his second-degree murder trial in May 2021 but it was delayed due to concerns about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
It was then scheduled to start in October 2021 but was postponed when Wright hired Lacy as his new lawyer. Lacy needed time to catch up on the case. His former counsel, Berk Keaney, declared a conflict of interest in the case, leading to the search for new counsel.
Wright then contracted COVID-19 during an outbreak at the Sudbury Jail. He was hospitalized as a result.
Wright has been denied bail four times since he was first arrested including the most recent application, in March.
