Our firm represents a lot of clients in the United States and other province’s on occasion. And one of the questions they ask me is after we’ve negotiated a resolution in the matter with the crown, the client’s decided not go to trial and they want to plead guilty, they ask, is it possible that I might not show up for the guilty plea and you enter the guilty plea for me. It is possible if the usually try to secure the crown’s consent and you have to get the Judge to agree as well, which is often done at a Judicial Pre-Trial in advance of the guilty plea date and you have to organize and everything so if there is a fine for example, you have that in your trust account and everyone is agreeable to this so it’s helpful to people who live in Michigan and other states that we represent and that we occasionally do this and if everyone’s on board the crown and the Judge we can usually get this done so it’s a great benefit to the client because their going to have to do extensive travel and it’s usually done on more minor cases. It’s quite difficult to do guilty pleas in absentia obviously, actually impossible I should say if your facing a jail term, these are for minor cases where you might be facing a fine or things like that so. That’s a little, that’s called guilty pleas in absentia which is latin for a guilty plea without the accused present in court at the time of the guilty plea.
