Typical Timelines For Weapons And Firearms Charges

I want to talk about the typical timelines and General skeps. In a matter where you’re charged with a firearm or weapons offense in Ontario or Canada, for that matter, my focus is on Ontario. So this is very important for clients to understand if they’re charged with a weapons or firearm offense, and there’s there’s very serious weapons offenses, and they’re very serious firearms offenses and very minor ones. So I’m going to focus first on the minor ones, where as a summary conviction election, you have a trial if it goes to trial to the interior court of justice or more a court. So what happens so let’s take the hypothetical you’re charged with a firearm or weapons offense? today that’s more minor charge crowds electing similarily. What do we do? Well, we first of all, in hiring us, we’re going to have you sign a piece of paper called a designation that gets filed with the court where your lawyers now okay. And we ordered the disclosure. That’s all the police reports, witness statements, test, firing the weapon, the pictures, photographs, video, whatever there is in the possession of the police, goes to the crown. The crown is required to give every scrap of that evidence to us photocopies of it, you name it, DVDs of surveillance, wiretaps, whatever, whatever it is they they have to give to us. So once we have all those documents, I’m in a position to review those carefully, and kind of formulate a tentative opinion about the strengths and weaknesses of the Crown’s case, whether they can prove the case, what your options are, whether I think you should consider plead guilty because the case is too overwhelming and what type of deals the crown might offer you. Once I finished that, and that might take you know, time depending on the complexity of the case, or it might not take a lot of time might take a day. If it’s just a more minor case. I’m in a position to meet with you. And review that with you have you review it as well on a different date. Have you sit down with disclosure fulsomely review, you give you all of your options. Talk about the strengths and weaknesses of the crowd case, whether I think matters trial, whether we win, whether the crowd is gonna offer a good deal in my mind whether we can negotiate something, and based on that you tell me what you’d like me to do is I give you legal advice. You tell me what you do do so you might say to me for example, Mike it’s an overwhelming case, I want you to associate the best deal you can with the crowd and I’ll take my lumps or you know what, Mike? You’re telling me I’ve got a pretty good shot at winning this. It’s a possession of a weapon for purpose dangerous public police, for example. And I’m not guilty according you don’t see a lot of strength to the Crown’s case. So we should head to trial unless they offer me a great deal like a peace bond or, or better yet, just withdraw the charge. Armed with all that information and your personal background and history, because it’s important, I go through that. I start the process of meeting with the crown, which is called a crown pre trial. And again, I have all of these discussions with the crown about whether the matters going to trial. trial management issues, witnesses who, who I’m calling who the Crown’s calling to manage court time, I’m also receiving and trying to convince the crown, perhaps withdraw the charge perhaps provide a peace bond going over the client’s background. So the bottom line is to try and get the Crown’s bottom line about what they’re offering. If they offer withdrawal, that’s fantastic. We can bring the case forward and have withdrawn peace plan sometimes great too. But they might not be playing ball that way. And they might be asking for a jail term. Or maybe they’re offering a conditional discharge where we can avoid a record. Ultimately, I take all this information back to the client. Give them my legal advice on that so they can make a decision. Do they like the crown offer? Yeah, that’s crater there, we’re trying to charge they’re offering a piece but I just have to forfeit the weapon. And you know, and get rid of my firearms for a number of years, or I like the conditional discharge, or no, they’re asking for a lengthy jail term, because it’s a serious offense, pointing a firearm or something at someone and but I think I can win and let’s have a trial. So I might need more than one crown pre trial more than one, pre trial with the with the crown. And I may need multiple meetings with you to figure out what we’re going to do. But ultimately you tell me what you’re going to do. So let’s assume you tell me to resolve it because we’re getting a conditional discharge for a minor weapons offense. Well, when I attend your first appearance, I’ve already attended to by the way before I met with you, the matter what over 12 weeks automatically pursuant to the designation system we have is a new system that was brought in during COVID. It’s called an enhanced designation. Court matters automatically over 12 weeks as a lawyer I’m expected to complete as many steps of the file I can in those 12 weeks. And we’re now in a position to plead guilty because we like to deal well, I might require a judicial pretrial, if I think I need approval the deal or might be such an obvious joint submission, that I know what Jen is going to prove that I don’t need additional pre trial. By the way, I encourage you to pre trials in another video, which you should watch. But the bottom line here to get judicial approval of a deal, I can meet with the judge and say, Look, we have a joint submission, here’s the client’s background, and the judge is gonna say, I like that, or I don’t like that, you know, once we have approval, we have certainty. Sometimes you need certainty. In other situations, it’s obvious where the judge is not going to jump and join submission. I go through these topics in other videos as well. Now, so we can move that so when the matter went ahead forward, was set 12 weeks down the road, if we’re pleading guilty, we can bring the matter forward and deal with that that’s not a problem. So don’t worry, the fact that went down 12 weeks, that’s just a reporting mechanism, we’re just showing up in court sing your worship to the justice, peace I, I just, you know, I’ve been retained, I’m going to do the steps on a file pretty pleased, kind of go over 12 weeks. It’s kind of a useless system. We could do this by email. We could do this by letter. I don’t know why we still have the system, but we do and Ontario. And I critique that in other videos, you’ll see but that’s the system we have it’s just reporting mechanism. It’s kind of like Reporting to Your boss, that you’re working on the project. And your boss says, what are the next steps? Okay, go go to it, they’ll give you another four weeks to complete it. Okay, that’s that’s hardcourt system. So you can resolve it at that point that can be done early on. And that can be done, you know, a time from two weeks to a month after the first court appearance up to four or five months, if we need to do a lot of work in your file, resolve it, bring it into court and be done with it so you can get move on with your life and hopefully get the lightest sentence we can for you. In a perfect world, I would draw in a second perfect world a conditional discharge or hopefully avoiding shelter. Now, on the other hand, if we set a trial date, what do we need to do for that? Well, the next step after I meet with the crown, is to set what’s called a judicial pre trial meeting, which is a meeting with the judge, the crown and I to talk about managing court time estimating how long a trial is going to take. Mike, what Mr. Cruz, what applications? Do you bring your other charter issues or the statement issues? How many witnesses you’re calling crown attorney? Who what witnesses are you calling? How long is this probably going to take, we need to analyze every step of what taking place in the trial to come up with a proper time estimate. And we’re now in a position to set a trial date. So let’s say it’s a one day trial today trial might be longer if it’s more complex case. Our staff then reaches out the trial coordinator organizes the earliest possible trial date, which is commensurate with the crown schedule police scheduled witnesses. And we secure those, those trial dates and then we appear on the record quarter the next quarter parents to set that that trial date on the road. Now when the heck is the vaccine question is, when do you get trial time and material? Very loaded question. In the interior Court of Justice, it really depends on the county. So if you’re in a busy County, like Toronto, or Ottawa, Brampton, these are busy courts, they’re really booked. So you might get a trial day. in Brampton, for example, if we’re lucky 12 to 15 months after your first court appearance in that range. By the way, our court system requires trials completed 18 months from the date of arrest, or you may have a delay application, as long as it lays not caused by defense counsel, check out my video on delay applications as well on that issue, I won’t get into that here. Now, in less busy counties, maybe you’ll get a trial date nine to 12 months. In a perfect world in some select counties which are not busy at all in Ontario. I’ve seen trial dates set six, seven months after the first appearance, but that’s a rarity that that may be pushing a bit. So that’s the range. It’s all over the map at ontario. Hopefully it stopped lagered at will sometimes you open logger date D because you needed to lay application but that’s kind of the parameters of Ontario we’ll call it six to seven months in a perfect world and a less busy county up to about 15 in Toronto, Brampton and sometimes even up to 18 there. Now again, the resolutions much less timeline for that. Now those are for more minor weapons and firm charges for more serious charges where they’ve elected by indictment. For example. Mission, use of a firearm or commission of fancy and very serious offense, danger, you know, possession of a weapon for purpose, danger to public peace where they’ve elected by indictment, you have greater rights, you have a right to elect in the lower court, which you might so if you left in the lower court I Terry court justice, same time I just told you about we just went over it. Or you can elect to be tried in the Superior Court of Justice, either judge and jury or judge alone. For commission of a firearm. Commissioner fence using a firearm, you actually have a right to a preliminary hearing as well. So if you elect preliminary hearing, it’s going to be the same timeline as a trial that I just went over for Satan. Perfect World six to seven months, up to 15, even up to 18 months after the preliminary hearing, if it’s committed to trial, there was enough evidence to put you on trial is going to go to Superior Court justice. And you might get your trial date on or they’re going to have to try hard to get it out of 30 months, you might get it on nine to 12 months after that. Now for possession of weapon for purpose games of public peace, you don’t have a right to claim your hearing. So after about four to five months in the interior Court of Justice remain system, which is the same process, we just went over your final election document to move into the higher court Superior Court, and it goes directly to trial. So maybe in a perfect world, you might get your trial date, 12 months after that or longer it really it could be up to 36. In a busy situation, if it’s a jury, God knows when they’re going to start because they’re paused during COVID. But it wouldn’t surprise me at all. That a case is going to take at least 30 months when you’ve elected up Superior Court, as predicted when you’ve had a preliminary hearing. But even when you haven’t had a premier hearing, it takes much longer. But sometimes strategically, it’s important to go to Superior Court of Justice, you may have a more liberal bench there or you may want a jury trial. Or you may want the strategic advantage of a plumber hearing every one of these little issues that I’ve talked about from the first appearance disclosure, defense counsel giving opinions, you know, crown pre trials, you name it, judicial pre trials, the trial process, what happens at trial, every one of these is covered in other videos, I just wanted to give you an overview of what we tell the client very early on in the process and constantly frankly. And we also tell the client about every one of these other issues as the file moves along what it means and what what because they client information is power. And a client needs this to alleviate their stress so they they know we’re moving their file properly. It takes time though don’t think that the court system happens overnight. If you’ve got a winning case, it could take up to 36 months in the spirit Court of Justice it can take up to 18 months and the Terek Court of Justice you know, it’s not going to happen next month. And resolutions sometimes take time to we need to sometimes put our ducks in a row where weapons get destroyed where you might have to get counseling or, or whatnot. So there’s the typical court process for lesser weapons offense, and typical court process for dateable weapons and firearms and I hope that provides you some useful information. If you’re charged with these type of things or or even if you just follow the criminal court system out of out of interest. 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. 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