How to Get Weapons or Firearms Charges Dropped

Our firm represents a lot of clients on weapons and firearms charges. And we’re always looking to get a charge dropped. I mean, that’s the goal of any client to get charged with Tron ultimately, and what are the ways and means of doing that? How can we get a firearms or weapons charge dropped? Well, first of all weapons and firearms charges. It’s the full Gambit from a very minor charge. Well, nothing’s minor but careless use or storage of a firearm rate up to use of a firearm a condition of offense with that attracts like years in jail, unfortunately, with mandatory minimum multi year jail terms. So what our first goal is to try and get the charge dropped, can we get it withdrawn? Well, the answer to that lies in the disclosure, we need to get the police reports, the witness statements, all of the videos, witnesses, you name it, there’s going to be documentation that’s provided to us. And when we receive that documentation from the crowd, I’m going to review it carefully. Sit down, analyze it, figure out if the police made mistakes. If there’s procedural errors, if there’s an identity issue, if it’s a weak circumstantial case, is there a valid search? Did they have a good search for it? Did they stop a person on the sidewalk for no apparent reason and found a weapon? Is there racial stereotyping? There’s all sorts of defenses to these charges. And I’m going to find it if there is. And of course, I get cases where it’s overwhelming a strong case, and you’re into just negotiating the most lenient possible sentence hopefully avoiding a GL term, or at least minimizing a jail term if it’s a serious offense, such as commission of a use of a fireman, a conditional fence. But I’m talking about a case where I see issues I spot issues and problems with the Crown’s case. So now what do I do, then? Well, I’m in a position now to provide the client with their legal opinion. So I meet with them, and maybe one of our meetings, they’re gonna want to review the disclosure to I’m in review with him, I’m going to give them my legal opinion about the strengths and merits of their case and what I think I can do with it. Hopefully, I’ve found some problems, some flaws with the Crown’s case. And I’m going to describe those to the client receive their instructions, I’m going to say if there are some flaws and charter issues and legal searches, some technical problems, police errors, police didn’t follow procedures correctly, invalid search, you name it. I’m going to just discuss that with the client received their version events, received their background to all their personal history, because if you’ve got a good prior background, that’s helpful in getting charges dropped, if it’s a weaker case, you know, the crowd is less interested in dropping charges against someone who has potentially multiple convictions on the record or as a drug dealers or things like that. But I’m, I’m talking about a person with a good prior record. So now I meet with the crown. And I, if it’s a mistake, that can’t be fixed, and that’s a key, and many mistakes can’t be fixed. I’ll disclose it to the crowd and ask them to withdraw the charge. Look, there’s no reasonable prospect to conviction. I’ve got to disclose charter issues to them. That’s a requirements reverse disclosure. I have a video about that, by the way on vs closure. Charter challenges do have to be disclosed. So you can discuss that, that sometimes technical flaws can be fixed by the police. So you have to be careful, you got to make sure it’s one that can’t be fixed before you disclose it. Because if it’s a powerful flaw, you might just want to go off to trial, because if they could fix it, that’s, that ain’t that ain’t good. So, and I think every lawyer in their career at one, I’ve been practicing law for 33 years, and I’m sure at one point in my career, I probably disclose too much to the crown on a particular case, and you only make that mistake once your career Believe me. You don’t make it after 33 years. So what do I do? I go to the crowd, and I discussed the case with them. I discussed my clients background Look, you’ve got this hole in your case, which can’t be fixed. It was an invalid search. There’s my identity issue. You got a weak circumstantial case. And hopefully the crowd agrees with me. So what will the crowd do? Well, if there’s no reasonable prospect of conviction, they should withdraw the charge that is not in the public interest to continue any charge with there’s no reasonable prospect of conviction. But what if there is some prospect that conviction? But the crowd says yeah, you’re right, you got a pretty good chance here. I think we should do this. It normally requires a criminal record. But you know, maybe I’ll agree to a conditional discharge on a minor offense for no record. Sometimes they’ve even got charges diverted, like a serious charge of careless use of a firearm or carry concealed weapon because it was promised with the case. diversion would be great. You get a you know, do some community service upfront, maybe take some Kells saying for violence or whatever weapons and get it get it withdrawn in court, I mean, that’s a fantastic result on a weaker case, because there’s still risk of going to trial, you don’t even want to go to trial and have a temper, even a 10% chance of losing. So there are weapons charges that we can get withdrawn. There are weapons charges that are weaker, where we can get where the crown is convinced to do a conditional discharge, occasionally, we can get diversion on a very weak case as well. So there’s ways and means I mean, these can be very serious charges, and you have to, as a lawyer, you have to do everything in your power to get the best result for the client. avoiding a criminal record and a conditional discharge of ways of criminal record is often a great result. And you know, I’ve had very serious weapons offenses where we had, you know, great results in this regard, including getting charges withdrawn, including getting diversion in one case, and there’s some cases conditional discharges, where we’re really the person should have gone to jail, but the crown said, You know what, you’re right. Like, you’ve got to, you’ve got a better, much better chance in winning and me and I’m going to cut my losses here. So it’s all about negotiation. It’s all about having the knowledge and the expertise and know what the defenses are, being a good constitutional lawyer knowing a client’s rights about search and seizure, because a lot of these weapons cases are pursuant to search warrants and homes, pursuant to searches on the street or car or in the context of a motor vehicle personal searches. And a lot of times the police make errors where they, they didn’t have reasonable proper grounds to search the person, or they did not set out proper reasonable proper grounds where you attack a search warrant. And we get the good result. And that’s what the clients want. I mean, who doesn’t want to carry their weapons charge dropping, that’s our first and primary goal when we get your case and analyze your disclosure and then negotiate with the crown.