All Drinking and Driving Charges Dropped

The client faced the criminal charges of impaired driving and driving with a blood-alcohol concentration over 0.08 (“Over 80”). He retained Tyler MacDonald a little late in the proceedings, but late is better than never.

In the time available, Mr. MacDonald conducted the necessary meetings to ready the client and the defence witnesses for trial. It soon became apparent that the police had egregiously violated the client’s Charter-protected rights to counsel, and that bringing an application to expose this at trial would be crucial to the client’s defence. Since succeeding in this Charter application required demonstrating that the arresting officer was untruthful in his note-taking and was lying in his testimony, it wasn’t going to be easy. Still, the client had the truth on his side, and a lawyer who had faced such a task more than few times before.

About a week before the trial date, the original arresting officer had the client arrested on a suspected technical violation of his bail terms. The motives of the officer in doing so are unknown, but this move did not end up helping the police or the prosecution. As Mr. MacDonald saw it, the record of the client’s arrest and of how he was treated upon arrest ended up creating new evidence which supported the client’s Charter application. The circumstances of this new arrest actually made the client’s case even better.

Mr. MacDonald promptly secured the client’s release from police custody and scheduled a new trial date that would allow a proper gathering of the new evidence. At the new trial date, after some productive discussions of the case with the prosecutor that morning (the contents of which must remain confidential), the Crown withdrew both of the drinking and driving charges. The charge that the client had breached his bail was dropped as well.