Loretta Saunders murder trial court appearance

The two people accused of killing Loretta Saunders appeared in court Monday to deal with some preliminary issues prior to the trial.

The body of the 26-year-old Saint Mary's Universitystudent was found in the median of the Trans-Canada Highway west of Salisbury, N.B., on Feb. 26. She was last seen on Feb. 13.

Victoria Henneberry, 28, and Blake Leggette, 25, are both charged with first-degree murder in Saunders'sdeath. Police believe she was killed in the Halifax apartment she shared with the pair and that they disposed of her body in New Brunswick.

The trial is scheduled for four weeks, beginning in mid-April.

Fivedays have been set aside, beginning Monday, to discuss the admissibility of evidence and whether there should be one trial, or two.

"It probably won't take an entire week to hear the evidence and make the arguments,"Crown prosecutor Christine Driscoll said outside court on Monday.

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Henneberry's lawyer, Pat Atherton, has requested a separate trial for his client. The Crown is opposing that request.Saunders'sfamily is also opposed to two trials.

Leggette's lawyer, Terry Sheppard, saidhe won't take a position on the number of trials until he learns whether evidence against his client will be excluded.

"The two are linked in a very real way," Sheppard said. "I'll take a different position if the evidence is excluded than I will if the evidence is included."

Sheppard said dealing with preliminary matters this week is more efficient.

At least one trial in April

"Otherwise, it just becomes inconvenient during the trial to deal with all these issues and have the jury shuffle back in and out so we're dealing with those issues now so hopefully they'll all be cleared up before the trial starts itself in April," he said.

The Crown said no matter what the judge decides on the severance issue, a murder trial for at least one accused should begin in April.

"I'm not certain how they would schedule it.We would never want to lose that time so we'd use it for one of the individuals and then perhaps schedule the other at another time. But I don't know which order they would happen in,"said Driscoll.

Henneberry and Leggette had been subletting Saunders's apartment in Cowie Hill whenthey were arrested in Harrow, Ont., with her car, five days after Saundersdisappeared.

Saunders was an Inuk woman from Labrador who was writing a thesis on missing and murdered aboriginal women at the time of her disappearance. Her family said at the time that they hoped to complete her thesis. They have also established a scholarship in her honour. The first person to receive one of the scholarships was awarded the money earlier this month.