What Are The Chances Of Winning A DUI Case In Ontario?

I got an interesting topic for a client of ours they show up at our office for initial consultation, the first question they want to know is what are my chances of winning my impaired driving or DUI is in this province.

If you look at statistics across Canada going back from both 2017 to the present, if thousands of DUIs in certain years if you look at those statistics, at least half of those were ultimately withdrawn or resulted in not guilty pleas or stays or acquittals or careless driving. So, of all these people charged they had a statistically a 50% chance of winning basically, but that’s not the end of the question.

That’s just probabilities based on a large sample. The real question are, are what are the chances of my DUI being acquitted? And the only person who can really answer that is an experienced lawyer, so for example, if a client comes to your office for the initial consult, they’ll tell us about their facts, they’ll tell us about the case, etcetera. And we can give them some ideas at that point, but we really can’t tell them the odds of it until we actually get all the police reports.

So once we get the police reports the notes, the breath sample, the readings and videos, we can then hone in and tell them in their particular case whether those odds are greater or less than 50%. So for example, if the client retains as we look at the case and look, their falling down drunk, they fall back from their and a police cruiser, well, not much of a chance of winning that case. So so that’s a slam dunk for the crown.

Another case might be well, there’s a chance of winning it, you know, the crown, the police didn’t really make any errors. They did everything well, you look relatively drunk, but if we have some things go right at the trial, you might win. Then on the other hand, there’s a case for 50/50 If you go either way, we get a lot of cases where there’s a really good chance of winning as well. And of course, we also get our closest slam dunk cases. And those probabilities and odds they really can only be told to you by your lawyer once they exam the file very carefully and get the police report.

It’s just it’s like going to see a doctor and ask them what my odds of dying are before you get all the test results of blood test and all these results. This is similar in a way the analogy is made while seeing your impaired driving lawyer.

So just to recap, then there’s a 50% chance of all these 1000s of cases in any given year in Ontario, about 50% of actually winning or getting withdrawn or careless driving or stay to delay and all those things.

But what’s the answer to your individual case? Well, that remains to be seen. I guess you put it this way, that analogy if if someone’s starting hockey at five years old, there’s 1000s of kids, what are their odds of making the NHL. Well, pretty low. Now once we get to the kid to say 16 Well, the scouts are going to say “this kids got a great chance” it’s similar your case we need to hone in on your particular case and figure out what your odds of winning. That’s one of the great reasons to hire a lawyer they can they can give you those odds and figure out the best way to handle your particular case whether to head to trial or be resolved for the best result possible.

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