‘There’s no fucking charges!’
Volatile defendant Joshua Daniel Grant Burden, 48, of Fredericton, claims he was locked up when he’s alleged to have committed new crimes between April, June
A Fredericton man facing numerous criminal charges - including counts of threatening a judge this summer - persisted in disruptive behaviour Monday, cursing out a judge and screaming over her.
Joshua Daniel Grant Burden, 48, of no fixed address, appeared in Fredericton provincial court in person Monday, scheduled to elect mode of trial and enter pleas on various charges.
He’s accused of uttering threats to Judge Scott Brittain to cause him death and/or bodily harm, engaging in communication intended to provoke a state of fear in Brittain to impede a prosecution against him and breaching a probation order.
Those charges stem from a June 19 appearance in provincial court on unrelated counts.
Burden, who loses patience with the court process and flies into rages frequently during his appearances, did so on that day as well.
“If you keep fucking with me, you should be worried about what I’m going to do to you,” Burden told Brittain on June 19.
Near the conclusion of that same proceeding, as the judge stated he was denying his release from custody, Burden yelled, “I’ll meet you in the parking lot at the courthouse and punch your fucking face off!”
Since he was charged with threatening a sitting New Brunswick judge, Nova Scotia provincial court Judge Diane McGrath was assigned the case.
She appeared by video link from Sydney, N.S., on Monday, but the proceedings didn’t go much better than they had previously.
Even before the judge came on screen, Burden ranted and hollered as he sat in the courtroom prisoner’s dock.
“They’re railroading me again!” he yelled, once again claiming he’s been in custody since last October and therefore couldn’t have committed offences alleged to have occurred between April and June.
He yelled at prosecutor Matthew Paik, and it sounded like he was about to threaten him.
“You better hope I don’t…” he said before deputy sheriffs rose and surrounded him.
“Get off of me. Walk the fuck away,” he told the officers as they tried to calm and quiet him. “Shut the fuck up… dickhead.”
When McGrath appeared on video and court convened, Burden said, “I plead not guilty … I haven’t been on the street since last year, and I don’t know where these charges come from.”
New Brunswick Legal Aid staff lawyer Edward Derrah was present to represent Burden.
He’d been assigned the legal aid file, he said, “but for various reasons, I’m not prepared to get on the record.”
Burden kept saying he was expecting Fredericton defence lawyer Gerald Pugh to be in court with “a legal aid form,” and he wanted nothing to do with Derrah.
“There’s no fucking charges!” he hollered at one point in the proceedings.
McGrath asked Burden if he wanted the charges read to him, to which he answered he did. However, on video, there appeared to be an issue with the judge’s copy of the paperwork.
She started to explain that there had been a problem with records at her courthouse in Sydney since a flood in February, but that seemed to send Burden off the deep end.
“I don’t give a fuck about your courthouse!” he yelled at McGrath. “You don’t know what’s going on, that’s the fucking issue!”
He claimed he’d been stabbed while on remand at the Saint John Regional Correctional Centre.
“I almost died from getting shanked,” Burden said forcefully.
“When I go to county [the Saint John jail], it’s on your fuckin’ head, you hear me, you fuckin’ bitch? … My life’s in danger!”
After several minutes of disruptions and disregard for what others were saying, McGrath ordered him removed from the courtroom.
She cited a section of the Criminal Code that allows court proceedings to continue in the defendant’s absence due to disruptive behaviour.
The judge noted the charges naming Brittain as the complainant are indictable, which means they carry with them an election of mode of trial.
Given Burden’s refusal to co-operate with proceedings, she said, she was entering an election of trial by judge and jury in the Court of King’s Bench.
That means Burden is entitled to a preliminary inquiry to determine if there’s sufficient evidence to set the matter over for trial at the higher level of court.
Paik estimated a half-day of court time would be needed for the preliminary inquiry, but the Crown needed a couple of months to prepare the audio and written transcripts from the earlier court appearance as evidence for that hearing.
McGrath scheduled it for Jan. 18, and she remanded Burden until that time.
The judge pointed out, though, that she was asked only to preside over the June 19 charges, and not the earlier ones.
Those previous charges include an April 19 break and enter into City Auto on Main Street, theft of a vehicle belonging to Nicolas McPhee on the same date, a June 6 sexual assault on a female complainant who can’t be named as per a court order, a June 7 breach of a no-contact order with that woman, June 7 threats against Eric Lanteigne and Terri-Lynn Stewart, as well as related breaches of a probation order.
Paik noted that while McGrath may not have carriage of those files, the court still needed to address them to maintain jurisdiction.
McGrath did so by adjourning them to Oct. 16 so pleas can be entered before a New Brunswick provincial court judge at that time. She noted it had been found there would be no conflict for a local judge to handle those files, only those involving Brittain.
Though he contends he’s been in custody since October 2022, court and police records indicate he was arrested June 7 in Fredericton after the alleged threats and contact with the sex-assault complainant.
Don MacPherson can be contacted at ftonindependent@gmail.com.
He sounds like a candidate for Campbellton