Our law firm represents a lot of people who are charged with mischief. And in this video, I’m going to be talking about how to defend one of these charges at trial. In another video, I talked about how to try and get Mr. Charge dropped that is withdrawn by the crown short of trial. But in this case, I’m talking about where we think we have a legitimate defense for trial, and we had a trial, and the crown wasn’t prepared to drop it, or they weren’t offering us any good deals. Well, there’s certain defenses to mischief. And really, you know, it really starts for me, when when a client retains our firm or myself, that I get ahold of the police report to review them and analyze them and figure out you know, can the crown prove this case? Can they prove identity? Can they prove is make use that did the case? Is it is it merely a circumstantial case that’s weak and they can’t show they destroyed the the damage? Is there a statement that the client gave, which I can get thrown out of court where he, he or she admitted something and there’s no other evidence or the statement? Did they own the property themselves, because you’re allowed to damage your own property as long as there’s no fraudulent intent. And this, this arises a little bit in marriages, because, you know, for example, I’ve seen cases where the police charged someone with with damaging a particular good in the marriage, and it was it was proven that we were able to weed the accused exclusively on that good. He had no Friday attendee was just mad, he broke his own Golf Club. Well, that’s his golf club, he’s allowed to break it, he didn’t hurt his wife or anything like that. So. So there’s different defenses we can use at trial. And there’s also a lot you know, if you if you have a color of right defense, where you think you own a particular good, that defense sometimes works as well, because there could be a mistaken belief that you own a particular good when in fact you didn’t, and you destroyed it. Another defense is where you accidentally caused mischief. For example, you know, a witness might say you intentionally destroyed something, but you’re saying it was an accident in the context of a reflex action, you take the witness, stand and testify and say it was an accident, the judge may believe you, the judge may disbelieve the other person, for example, a wife who says that may or may not have a motive to lie, you know, the judge might might find that. So it really starts with that disclosure, I get the accused version events, they might tell me about one of these fences. Look, Mike, I, that’s my good. It’s not my wife is my golf club. You know, it wasn’t me or who did that is a circumstantial case where it kind of points to them, but it could point to someone else. So so we go to trial on these and we try and create a reasonable doubt. If the accused and any any complainant testifies if their evidence, if we need to change your evidence we do. For example, if it’s a husband claiming the wife destroyed one of their jointly owned goods, maybe the husband has a motive to lie, maybe he’s making it up, who knows. But it’s all about proper preparation. It’s about preparing your client to testify properly in advance of the trial that takes hours of work. You’ve got to walk them through what questions you’re going to ask what questions the crowd is going to ask, show them what they’re doing wrong, and actually tried to destroy them in your office and show them what’s working and not working. Believe me. Even when a person’s telling the truth. If they’re not properly prepared for trial, they’re going to be a disaster on the witness stand in the hands of a good cross examination. A good defense lawyer will destroy even a truthful witness if you’re not properly prepared. And that’s important so we prepare our witness properly. I look at all the case law I look at the facts of the case and say what is the defense here? Can I show it was my clients good? Can I show he didn’t intend to do to destroy it? It was an accident. Can I show the complainants really making up this story is not credible because they have motive to lie. These are all the strategies and techniques that we take at trial and you know when we want to try it Mr. case, I’ve already told my client there’s a reasonable chance I don’t tend to take trick cases to trial unless we have reasonable chance of winning I mean I’m always very honest with our clients we look you don’t have a chance of winning this nice day to trial you’re guilty let’s plead guilty. We take cases to court where there’s at least a reasonable chance of winning I rarely have a client say to me Give me instructions well you know, I said look there’s no chance of winning this I want to trial anyway, what’s the point we’re gonna lose? It’s you need to you need to plead so so these cases can be won some cases at least, because it falls into one of these fact patterns that I’ve talked about where there’s a legal defense, or we can challenge the credibility of the complainant because they perhaps that most ally that made the story up that the person broke something. So when you look at the burden of proof in Canada, it’s still proof beyond reasonable doubt. And if you have a defense to mischief matter, we’re going to take it to trial. And if you don’t, we’re going to tell you, you should plead guilty and get the latest deal you can. Thank you for watching our video, we are absolutely committed to bringing you the best possible criminal and DUI educational videos. If you found this video helpful, please like it and subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you’ve been charged with a criminal offence in Ontario and require our services, please click on the link in the description below.
