OTTAWA – They’ve taken on murderers, fraudsters and dog-beaters.
Now two Crown prosecutors are preparing for what could be the trial of their careers: Mike Duffy.
Assistant Crown attorneys Mark Holmes and Jason Neubauer have been assigned to prosecute the suspended former Conservative senator, whose first appearance on 31 charges including fraud and breach of trust takes place in an Ottawa courtroom on Sept. 16.
Duffy is not expected to show; his lawyer Donald Bayne will likely attend on his client’s behalf.
Bayne did not return a call from Global News Friday. But Duffy has said he is “looking forward” to his day in court.
The prosecutors will also take on retired Liberal senator Mac Harb, charged in February with one count each of fraud and breach of trust for his spending of Senate housing and living money.
Patrick Brazeau, another suspended former Conservative senator facing the same charges as Harb, has opted to conduct his trial in French. No trial dates have yet been set for either of them.
READ MORE: Senate refuses to divulge Duffy’s allegedly criminal expense claims
Holmes and Neubauer declined to be interviewed for this article.
But a perusal of their cases from the past two years shows the breadth of their criminal law experience. Neither specializes in a specific type of prosecution but each has experience in fraud cases.
Holmes, 51, got his start in Scarborough, Ont. as a Crown lawyer more than 20 years ago and has worked in Ottawa since 1999.
Most recently, in June he worked on a case involving a curator at the Canada Agriculture and Food Museum who admitted to keeping child pornography on his work computer.
Holmes prosecuted the 2010 trial of Roger Clement, a retired civil servant who firebombed a Royal Bank branch in Ottawa. He was also the Crown lawyer on a July 2013 case in which a 23-year-old man was sentenced to four months in jail for repeatedly punching his girlfriend’s dog.
Neubauer, 40, has worked as an assistant Crown attorney since 2001 after articling at the Crown attorney’s office in Ottawa.
He was the Crown lawyer who achieved a conviction, now on appeal, in the beating death of Ottawa man Brian Fudge in 2012.
And in June 2013, Neubauer successfully prosecuted Neil Shah, a con man who posed as a lawyer and defrauded victims of almost $2.3 million.
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