Accused Testifying at Over 80MG Trials

So for that type of defense, it’s not about the accused supplying the mistake. It’s the defense or cross examining the police to show that they’d made that mistake, so and for that type of over 80 type case where you’re exposing a deficiency, the accused wouldn’t have to testify at all so that’s great. It makes it a lot easier because you don’t have to prepare your client to testify. Now there are situations in an over 80 trial where you need to bring a charter application, it might be a right to counsel application, or reasonable probable grounds application which I covered in other videos. In those cases, your client may or may need to testify on the pretrial application. It just depends. In many rights to counsel applications is necessary for your client to testify.

It’s more rare in an RPG reasonable probable ground application in that case, usually not actually. So there are certain charter issues that we file that go along with the trial that occur take place at the beginning of the trial, where they do have to testify for most 80 and over cases, though, where there’s not impaired driving trials, the accused does not have to testify. There are still a few positive defenses where they might, I’ll give you an example. The accused has testified that they drank after an accident, for example, are trying to show that they were below the legal limit at the time of the of the accident. They went home for example, and started drinking. So there you have it. The beauty of doing a lot of over 80 cases is the accused often does not have to testify so it relieves that stress.

You’re just looking for a mistake that the police make you expose and create a reasonable doubt and and many of these cases can be won on that point. Many of these cases can also be one arguing charter issues where the accused often has to testify, but certainly not in every case. So there you have it, the short answer, hopefully to whether an accused needs to testify and over at case