Defence application to strike sexual assault, child luring guilty pleas set for February
LETHBRIDGE – A hearing has been scheduled for early next year, at which time a Coaldale man will get a chance to convince a judge that guilty pleas he entered to charges of sexual assault and child luring should be struck from the record.
Trevor Pritchard entered the pleas in April – his fourth conviction for sexually assaulting adolescent girls – prompting the Crown to seek a dangerous offender designation for him.
Following the guilty pleas, Pritchard parted ways with his lawyer and retained William Wister to handle the proceedings. Since taking over, Wister has argued that his client did not fully understand the implications of the guilty pleas when he entered them under previous counsel, and launched an application have the pleas struck.
The hearing, which will be before the Queen’s Bench Justice who accepted Pritchard’s guilty pleas, has been scheduled to run Feb. 5 – 7, 2019.