Joint Sentencing Submissions

Thanks so much for joining me today. I had a great day of doing videos today and this is the last one for the day. It’s getting late on Friday. So I’m getting a little tired here. But I have an interesting topic. This is about what is the joint submission in Canadian Law? Very simply, it’s a joint sentencing submission. So very simply, there’s often many cases that our firm does and all criminal law firms do where we meet with a crown and we negotiate a sentence. Let’s say, it’s a weaker case for the crown and our client wants resolve it and the crown understands they have a pretty good chance of losing the trial. So the crown’s going to offer a pretty good deal. Well, they have to because otherwise we’re going to go to trial. And instead of say, one year in jail, they offer us three months in jail, which is a good deal for the client because they avoid the risk of a trial that they might lose even though we’ll probably win. The crown gets something, we get something these are these discussions can go on for months. You know, you’re back and forth. You’re going to court you’re having a preliminary hearing where you see how strong or weak the case is and the crown finally realizes, I got a pretty weak case, I’m going to offer a good deal. So what we often do then after you negotiate that we’ll go do a crown, I should say a judicial pretrial. I have another video about that. You should watch it with this, but we get approval from the judge for the joint submission. And then we’re going to do it. Now, when can a judge give higher than a joint submission in Canada? Well, first thing is, I got to tell you this. It’s very rare for a judge to joint jump go higher than joint submission. So if the defence and crown agree that say six months jail is pretty rare for the judge to ever go, or otherwise our system would collapse. Why would defence counsel ever do a joint submission or even consider pleading guilty for that matter if judges would act with it, but that way they don’t. And to show you how rare it is that a judge jumps that joint submission? I don’t think my entire career I’ve had one of my joint submissions jump because it’s been carefully negotiated. We go to court, we explain the reasons for the judge why it might be light, for example, or why it might be medium or why it should be at the higher end of the range. The judges usually accept that. I have seen joint submissions to depart from a Judge and what is the test? The Supreme Court of Canada sets out the test. It has to be contrary to the Administration of Justice, in other words, so odious or offensive to the judge that it’s ridiculous. Like for example, let’s say there was a sexual assault case involving sexual intercourse which was a strong crown case and defense counsel and crown agreed to one year sentence Well, that would be a ridiculous sentence and contrary to knowing the public interest that the Administration Justice because the range of sentence is really starting to approach three years for a strong case. Now on the other hand, if we went, you know, it was a slightly weaker crown’s case and the crown suggested maybe 18 months to resolve this and the client wanted because they didn’t want to run the risk of trial well that’s, that’s certainly at the maybe even below the range. But it might be explainable, it may not be concrete and Administration of Justice. In other words, the crown got something they gave up something but they got something. The defense has greater certainty that they avoid a three year jail term, or the client wants to go to trial. It’s totally up to the client, but every case is different. You have to analyze but the bottom line of Canada is, by and large, joint submissions are very well respected to judges by judges and they don’t blow them up unless it’s contrary in public interest. Or, you know, totally against the Administration of Justice and it just odious deal, but that rarely happens. And you know, what, I’ve seen some, perhaps you have a judge blow up a joint submission, it’s been overturned on appeal because it wasn’t contrary to the Administration of Justice or, you know, the or the public interest. So there you have it, a lot of our cases and criminal cases in Canada, Ontario, resolve, which I submissions, it’s the way the system works. And these are between professional crowns and defence counsel understand the strengths and the weaknesses that are case whether they should go to trial, whether they should do a lighter deal, middle or it’s an aggravating circumstance where defence counsel has to agree to a high sentence or the judge will go even higher.  And that’s just a bit of a primer. And it was a great good day of doing video, and I really enjoyed it and we’ll see you next time on our video channel.