Hearing in Winnipeg dead infants case tied up in intervener applications

The lawyer for Andrea Giesbrecht, accused of hiding the remains of six infants in a Winnipeg storage locker, was back in court on Friday to seek an order to have an independent observer at the autopsies.

Greg Brodsky made the request at a hearing on Wednesday but now several applications have been made for intervener status, including from the Winnipeg Police Service and the Chief Medical Examiner's Office.

The court is attempting to determine who should have standing before resuming with Brodsky's motion.

The judge overseeing the matter will hand down a decision on Nov. 5.

David Gisser, the lawyer for chief medical examiner's office, called the motion "unprecedented" and said he is concerned the application challenges the "independence, impartiality and integrity of the office."

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Because the autopsy is not a Criminal Code case or an inquest, the court doesn't even have authority to deal with such a motion, Gisser added.

The provincial Fatality Inquiries Act specifically gives the medical examiner independence and authority over how autopsies are done, he said.

The autopsies — which were 90 per cent complete until being postponed due to Brodsky's motion — will help determine the age of the remains.

That is an important factor because homicide charges cannot be laid against Giesbrecht if the results show the remains are of fetuses less than 20 weeks old because a fetus cannot live outside the womb at less than 20 weeks gestation, Kirsten Kramar, a criminologist at the University of Winnipeg, told CBC News.

If the remains are determined to be more than 20 weeks, the medical examiner would then have to determine if they were born alive or stillborn, and if they were siblings born to the same mother, she said.

Kramar said that determination is going to be difficult, however, since the remains were found in varying stages of decomposition.

They were discovered on Oct. 20 inside a locker at a U-Haul facility.

Giesbrecht, 40, is charged with six counts of concealing the body of a child.