How Long For An Assault Case To Go To Trial?

So on your typical assault or domestic assault matter the Crown’s going to elect summarily so what’s going to happen is your first court date’s going to be three to say six weeks after your arrest. The matter is then going to go into the remand process and remand court in front of the Justice of the Peace for say two to three to four months. During that period your lawyer is collecting all the evidence, collecting disclosure, reviewing it with you, negotiating with the Crown and eventually having what is called a judicial pretrial which is a necessary meeting with the Crown and Judge before a trial date is set. So even as far as five months down the road you are in a position to set a trial date. Now you might be able to do that quicker depending on the instructions you give your lawyer but that’s probably the longer period of time.

So now we’re setting a trial date and depending on the county, boy the courts are booked in the province and you are not looking at a court date for months down the road. Depending on the county it could be six, eight, ten, twelve months after the judicial pretrial that you are actually having your trial, your case is going to be completed. You may win your case there or lose your case depending on whether you are found guilty or not but those are the timelines. So when you add that all together boy you’re looking at really up to 18 months. More typically it’s probably going to take in the range of twelve to fifteen months from the date of your arrest before you have your trial. We wish of course your trial was quicker in the province but those are the realities of court timelines in this province.