What Evidence do Police need in order to Charge Someone

Welcome back to our YouTube channel. I’m so glad you could join me today. A lot of our clients will show up in our office after we receive disclosure and say, how can the police charge me there’s no evidence against me. There’s just one eyewitness who’smy wife is just he said, versus she said, well, in Canada eyewitness testimony is perfectly acceptable.

Many of our cases in Canada are on domestic assault or sexual assault. The only real evidence is eyewitness testimony. So that’s concerning to some people, but it’s very valid and accepted evidence. Of course, the judge has to determine the credibility and reliability of the evidence but to say there’s no evidence against me there is a lot of evidence there’s your wife testifying or an alleged victim testify against you. You know, we often see these TV shows there’s this kind of more sexy or involved, you know, evidence such as DNA evidence and CCTV evidence and videos and things like that and all sorts of circumstantial evidence, but the reality is the majority of criminal cases involve eyewitness testimony, which can be fraught with difficulty I mean, some people have motives to lie, some people didn’t see a scene properly or not relating it properly. So this is why in in many of those type of cases, they are defendable.

I mean in a sexual assault matter It’s often the victim’s word against the accused and domestic assault is the same thing. But you know, people are very surprised when the police show up at the home and there’s no injuries. And the wife simply says she was slapped and the police automatically lay a charge and it goes to trial. That’s, that’s the way our system works.

It’s worked like that for really hundreds of years in Western society and including Canada and England. And, and eyewitness testimony is very well accepted in the court as long as the witness is credible or reliable. But of course, the burden of proof is on the crown they have to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt and you will get a chance to testify and this is why many of those cases are absolutely winnable if you’re come across yourself as the defendant as being credible.

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