Case results
Here are 12 matters and how each was resolved. Names and identifying details have changed or left out to protect client confidentiality.
12 matters, and the route to each outcome
Every case turns on its own facts. These outcomes came out of particular circumstances and promise nothing about yours. What they show is the kind of argument that produces them.
- Acquitted
Murder
Two neighbours had been in a long-running dispute. Our client was driving home from a corner store when the neighbour pulled out of a driveway on a motorcycle. The motorcyclist died. Our client was charged with murder. The matter was tried before a jury, which returned a verdict of not guilty.
- Charges stayed
Drug Trafficking · Fentanyl
Police acting on a confidential informant followed our client onto Highway 401 and forced his vehicle off the road, dragging him through the window of his truck and fracturing his shoulder blade. Several kilograms of drugs were recovered. We moved to stay the proceedings on the basis of cruel and unusual treatment and an unlawful search. The charges were stayed. Our client went home without a conviction.
- Charges withdrawn
Drug Offences · Grow Operations
Officers responding to a neighbour’s call entered an apparently vacant house without a warrant and found a grow operation in the basement. A sergeant attended and entered as well, then directed that a warrant be obtained. A utility bill found inside led police to a second address, and an infrared overflight was used to support a further warrant. The aircraft had flown over the wrong house. A third warrant followed from the second. We argued that every warrant was derivative of the initial warrantless entry. All of the drugs, firearms and cash were excluded and the Crown withdrew the charges.
- Acquitted
Sexual Assault
Our client had been recorded on audio appearing to agree that he had assaulted a former partner. We brought an application to exclude the recording from trial. Following cross-examination of the complainant, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty.
- Acquitted
Murder
A young man was killed with an ice pick after an altercation outside a party. Several witnesses identified our client. Cross-examination undermined those identifications, and we established that another individual had carried out a strikingly similar ice-pick attack in the preceding months. The jury acquitted.
- Acquitted · Property returned
Drug Trafficking · Fentanyl
Police obtained a warrant permitting arrest only if our client left a specified residence in possession of drugs. They watched the house, followed the resident to a pharmacy, and arrested our client on his way out. Significant quantities of fentanyl and cash were seized, along with his vehicle. We argued there was no evidence he possessed anything before the arrest and search. The evidence was excluded, our client was acquitted, and his car was returned.
- Acquitted
Robbery · Break and Enter
Our client was alleged to have robbed several cell phone stores at gunpoint. An officer stopped a suspicious vehicle nearby and found a trunk containing phones, cash, tools and a handgun. Police then sought a warrant and the registered owner’s consent to search again. We moved to quash the warrant and exclude everything seized. The motion succeeded, and cross-examination established that the eyewitness identifications could not be relied on. The jury returned verdicts of not guilty.
- Acquitted
Fraud · Multi-Million Dollar
Our client, an employee of a well-known Canadian firm, was alleged to have defrauded millions of dollars and wired the proceeds to Europe. A private investigative firm analysed employee hard drives and reported finding remnants of documents said to have facilitated the fraud. A close review of the forensic findings, and of what they could really establish, produced a win at trial and congratulations from the officer in charge of the investigation.
- Dismissed
Assault with a Weapon
Our client was alleged to have taken a tire iron from his car and beaten a man with it. Cross-examination revealed that the complainant had been harassing and threatening a young woman whom our client was attempting to protect, and that the complainant had attacked him first. The judge dismissed the case and expressed regret that our client had been charged and brought to trial.
- Acquitted on all counts
Robbery · Multiple Counts
Our client was alleged to have committed a series of street robberies at gunpoint across the city. Every complainant had seen the robber and the firearm at close range. Under cross-examination, no two of them described the same person or the same gun. The suspect was variously Black and white, blue-eyed and dark-eyed, holding a silver gun and a black one. Our client was acquitted on all charges and counts.
- Acquitted on all charges
Pornography · Possession, Making, Importing
Our client was stopped by customs officers at Pearson Airport and his cell phone was searched. He was charged with possession, making and importing. We established that he was unaware the material was on the device. He was acquitted of all charges and left court a free man.
- Original charge withdrawn
Historical Sexual Offence (1994)
Our client was charged in relation to an allegation from 1994 involving another man. No such offence existed in Canadian law at that time. The original charge was withdrawn and a lesser charge substituted, which was resolved in our client’s favour.
The pattern behind these results
Most of what is on this page comes down to 3 things.
- Attack the search
Of the 12, 6 turned on how the evidence was obtained: a warrantless entry, a defective Information to Obtain, an unlawful stop, an arrest outside the terms of a warrant. Take the evidence away and the prosecution tends to go with it.
- Test the identification
Eyewitness identification is at once the most persuasive and the least reliable evidence the criminal law admits. Cross-examination that establishes what a witness could not have seen has won us acquittals on murder and robbery charges.
- Prepare for months
Homicide and fraud disclosure runs to tens of thousands of pages, and the defence is somewhere inside it. There’s no shortcut and no substitute for reading every page.
Talk it through with a lawyer
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