The start of the retrial of David Bain has been moved back five days. "At the request of both the Crown and the defence the empanelling of the jury for the trial of David Bain has been rescheduled to occur on Friday 6 March rather than Monday 2 March 2009," Christchurch High Court registrar Helen Vermeulen announced this afternoon.
Bain is charged with the murders of his father, mother, two sisters and brother in Dunedin in 1994. Bain served 13 years in jail before he was bailed when the Privy Council overturned his convictions in 2007.
Last week, pre-trial arguments were heard in the High Court in Christchurch.
Yesterday there was a hearing before the Supreme Court in Wellington. There the court heard an application from Michael Reed QC to have new evidential matters included in Bain's retrial, which is scheduled to begin next week, Newstalk ZB reported.
Mr Reed and his defence team were allowed to appeal an earlier decision by the High Court which excluded the new evidence from any retrial and there will be another full hearing on Wednesday.
As in all of the other pre-trial hearings, the details were suppressed.
One News reported that lawyers it had spoken to said it was most unusual to have matters like this still being resolved so close to the start of a big trial.
There was a four-day hearing in Christchurch last week in the High Court with the defence arguing that the charges against Bain should be dropped altogether. A decision on that is not expected until the end of the week.
