Can Assault Charges Be Dropped By The Victim?

Welcome back to our channel. I’ve got a great day of videos planned for you today, and the first topic is can assault victim drop the charges. So let’s say you’re a victim of assault, you’re female or male, and you’ve reported to the police and they’ve laid charges. Can you get those dropped? You wake up the next day oh geez I shouldn’t have done that or I shouldn’t have laid the charges, I shouldn’t have reported that to the police.  Well, the short answer is no the discretion is completely within the Crown, the prosecutor. So once the charge is laid and particularly in a domestic assault, it’s very difficult to get the charges dropped. You can’t just go to the Crown and say please drop the charges. You see, you’re a witness and the Crown is in charge. They have discretion. The Crown in Ontario, and throughout Canada, they have directives and policies that they’re supposed to proceed with these types of charges. If they feel that they have reasonable prospect of conviction, they are going to proceed no matter what you say.  Now, there’s some slight differences if it’s a non-domestic assault. Victims have a little bit more say there. There’s a little bit more discretion. So for example, let’s say it’s a bar fight and let’s say there’s no injuries. It’s still up to the Crown though. You could go to the Crown and say look I don’t want to proceed with this.  I don’t want the hassle of the courtroom. It’s no good. The Crown can still decide to proceed but there’s a little bit more flexibility there. Sometimes the Crown might consider it and offer a peace bond. There’s clear directives in domestic assault and people get so upset because they rethink things. Maybe their husband pushed them, maybe it was a minor push, the police show up or vice versa the wife pushed the husband, and there’s reasons for this that the crown won’t withdraw the charge because, you see, the Crown represents the public interest. They’re not representing that individual victim. They’re trying to deter crimes in society generally and they’re trying to deter future things that can happen to that victim. It may not be that victim’s best interests to have the charges dropped. So the only person that can drop charges so to speak is the Crown. 

Now on the right case, if it’s a weaker case and the Crown doesn’t think they have a reasonable prospect of conviction they might withdraw the charge or they might offer a peace bond to avoid a criminal record. There’s very clear public policy reasons why assault victims can’t just go to the Crown and particularly domestic assault victims because this is a widespread problem in Canada. 

So there you have it basically. The key takeaway is, if you go to the police, if you phone the police, particularly as a domestic assault victim, that charge is not necessarily going away and you may be very upset the next day or the next month when you rethink things and the Crown’s going to go ahead and quite properly,so, in many cases, because we’re trying to deter crime. You see, there’s a reason for this policy. For example, let’s say an assault victim does drop the charge and the Crown allows it, well, one in 10,000 or one in 5000 cases, a husband or wife could go home and kill that person or hurt that person. So we have very clear policies for this. So what happens if the victim doesn’t show up? I’m not going to testify. Well they can subpoena you to court and force you to testify. If you refuse to testify, you could be charge with contempt of court, for example. So is quite a conundrum for people who wake up the next day, I don’t want to proceed. Well it’s going to proceed, particularly in domestic assaults, unless the crown does not feel they have a reasonable prospect of conviction. And the bottom line for other types of cases of non-domestic assault there might be some more discretion. Some Crown’s will listen a little bit, but ultimately, they may not. It’s in the public interest the Crown proceed in many cases and it’s completely up to the Crown.  That’s the bad news for people who want the charges dropped.