Despres's double-murder trial delayed again

Family members of a victim in a double killing are angry that the trial of Gregory Despres has been delayed again, and rescheduled for a controversial date.

A psychiatric assessment ordered by the court in early February did not get to Judge Judy Clendenning in time for a hearing Friday.

Although Clendenning did receive a private evaluation of Despres from the defence, she delayed a hearing on his mental state until April 24th.

The date outraged family members of Fred Fulton, because it is so close to April 26, the anniversary of the 2005discovery of his body and that of Verna Decarie in their Minto, N.B., home.

The assessment is Despres's third, after two other assessments declared him fit to stand trial. Despres is charged with two counts of first-degree murder.

Marvin Richardson, Fulton's brother-in-law, said it will be difficult for family to sit through proceedings at that time.

"I'm hurting for all the family," Richardson said outside the court. "It's hard for me to express myself, because today I am really sad that our system is as crazy as it is.

"We've got to come up here on the 24th, and we've got to sit back and look at a lot of things, and it's not that we want to be sitting here at a trial … the day that [Fulton] was murdered."

The trial, which began Jan. 8, has heard that Fulton, 74, was decapitated and Decarie, 70, was stabbed numerous times.

Despres, who has dual citizenship, was arrested in Massachusetts on the same day the bodies were found.

The trial has focused on often gruesome details of the crime scene in the Fulton home, and how bloody prints in the home matched boots seized from Despres.

Other testimony showed that DNA in blood found on items carried by Despres when he crossed the U.S.-Canada border matched Fulton's DNA.