During the ninth week of the Nathaniel Veltman murder trial, senior defence lawyer Christopher Hicks almost ended his affiliation with the proceedings.
The Toronto-based lawyer is one of the founding partners of the criminal law firm Hicks Adams.
He has been practicing criminal law for more than 25 years and was named to the 2023 The Best Lawyers in Canada list.
According to his firm, Hicks has a special interest in jury trials and appeals cases.
Hicks represented Veltman, who pleaded not guilty to four counts of terrorism-motivated first degree murder and one count of terrorism-motivated attempted murder.
Veltman admitted to driving his truck into Talat Afzaal, 74, her son Salman Afzaal, 46, his wife Madiha Salman, 44, Salman and Madiha's daughter Yumnah, 15, and their 9-year-old son on June 6, 2021.
Only the young boy survived the collision.
On November 2, following a third voir dire held to discuss the testimony of forensic psychiatrist Dr. Julien Gojer, Hicks told the court that he didn't believe he could continue with the trial.
Justice Renee Pomerance announced after the voir dire that she had taken the defence at its word regarding Gojer's evidence. She added that she may not have let him testify at all, had she known during the original voir dire that his theory was based on novel science.
"It is now clear to me that I should not have granted that latitude to the defence," Pomerance said at the time.
Hicks told Pomerance that she had "diminished the status of counsel."
The judge did apologize to Hicks, saying that wasn't her intention.
After several hours and discussing things with Veltman and his co-counsel, Hicks ultimately decided to continue with the trial.
This is not Hicks' first high profile case.
He is well known for defending Brett Gardiner, one of the men convicted in the Bandidos Massacre in 2009. He also defended double murderer Glenn Bauman, who was sentenced to life without parole after being convicted of two counts of first degree murder in the killings of his common-law wife, Linda Daniel, 48, and her daughter, Cheyenne Daniel, 13, in July 2011.