What is a Crown Pre-Trial?

There are various steps in any criminal file. Whether it’s a minor DUI file or murder file, and the steps follow a particular pattern and I go over these patterns and the actual steps, in at least one or more other videos, that I’ve done and I recommend you should watch those, if you like to know all of the steps of a criminal matter. But one of the more important steps is a Crown pre-trial, also known as a crown resolution meeting, and what is exactly is this? Well this is a step which occurs after we’ve receive disclosure, that is all the evidence, that the police gave to the Crown which the Crown gave to us. And we’ve met extensively with the client to receive their version of events. Review all of the disclosure, and kind of have an idea of where we are heading in a case. So we go into this crown pre-trial, with some good instructions from our client, so, what it is then, it’s a meeting with the crown. Effectively, we sit down together, we talk about various aspects, in fact, most of all aspects of the case are on the table, and we can have the pretrial for one of two purpose, or both at the same time. We can sit there and try to negotiate a resolution of the matter.  Which may involve reaching a joint submission about sentence or the Crown gives me their position on sentence, which may be very high, may not be very reasonable, my position is usually lower obviously, or we reach a meeting of the minds, and it makes sense for the client to plead guilty because they are getting a meaningful resolution, and avoid the risk of going to trial, or in fact they are guilty, there’s no defence, there’s no room to be negotiated. So that’s one as pect. These meetings can take place over several times, meetings, especially on complex cases. The client is not present at that meeting. It’s simply the Crown and the defence.. The Crown attorney, that is the prosecutor, and myself, as defence counsel.  Now the other purpose of a crown pretrial is when you know you are going to trial is to try and manage court time. So the Crown and I are sitting down again discussions all aspect of the case, the crown is advising what witnesses they are going to call, we are advising we are having witnesses, I don’t necessarily disclose then, I would just say “ yeah, I am going to call 0- 3 witnesses”, we don’t’ have to disclose our vets? . We discuss whether there’s going to be Charter applications, that’s something that has to be disclosed, it doesn’t have to be disclosed early, but, we tend to do that in a pretrial. Charters, these are constitutional arguments to exclude evidence. Substantive defences like self defence, you don’t get into all the facts, of what the client said, that’s not a good strategy.  So anyway, it’s a fulsome discussion, we try to come up with an estimate of trial time, and estimate of witnesses, to be called, the Crown might agree to call certain witnesses that I want them to call, that I need, for example, and we might make various admissions, which don’t hurt the defence, but which save court time.  So it’s rather fulsome discussion about trial management issues and or trying to resolve to win your case.