At Kruse Law Firm, we offer a wide range of criminal law practice areas, including sexual assault, domestic assault, theft, fraud, drug charges, impaired driving/DUI, and any type of Criminal Code driving offence.
Our team has the experience and training necessary to help you navigate the court process and achieve the best possible outcome for your case.
We understand that facing criminal charges can be a stressful and overwhelming experience.
That’s why we offer a variety of educational resources, including free eBooks, blogs, FAQs, news articles, and videos, to help you better understand the charges against you and the legal process.
Whether you are looking for information on how to challenge charges of drunk or impaired driving, or you simply want to learn more about your rights as a defendant, our team is here to help.
Impaired Driving Charge Court Process
If you are charged with impaired driving, the court process can be lengthy and complex. Here is an overview of what you can expect:
First Appearance
After your arrest, you will be given a court date about three to six weeks later. You should retain a lawyer as soon as possible, and sign a document called a Designation for them to appear in court on your behalf. You do not have to attend the first appearance, but your lawyer will need to attend for you. At this stage, the Crown is expected to provide your lawyer with all the police reports, which is called disclosure.
Remand Process
Once your lawyer has reviewed the disclosure, they will be in a position to meet with you and discuss your options. If you have a reasonable chance of winning your case, and the Crown is not offering a deal, you may decide to go to trial. If your case is more difficult to win, you may want to try and minimize the penalty. This is called the remand process, and can last for 2-3 months or longer in a DUI case. Your lawyer will meet with the Crown to get their position and see if a deal can be worked out, or if you are heading to trial.
Judicial Pretrial
At the end of the remand process, most counties in the province will require a judicial pretrial. This is a meeting with the judge, the Crown, and your defence lawyer, to discuss trial issues. The judge will manage court time, and may suggest ways of resolving the case. For example, If you are offered a careless driving offer to avoid a criminal record, you may consider taking it.
Trial Date
Your trial date in Ontario will take place anywhere from 4-12 months after the judicial pretrial. Your lawyer will diligently prepare your case, and file any necessary applications, such as charter applications. They will also prepare you to testify, and cross-examine the Crown’s case.
The average DUI trial in Ontario is typically a one-day trial, but more complex cases may take two and occasionally three days.
Throughout the court process, your lawyer will keep you informed of where the case is heading, discuss your options, provide you with ongoing legal advice and receive your instructions regarding whether you want to proceed to trial or resolve your case. It’s your decision, but a good DUI lawyer will guide you and provide legal advice and make recommendations in your best interests. If you are found guilty of impaired driving, you will face penalties such as fines, jail for aggravated cases, a licence suspension, and possibly an ignition interlock device in your car. However, there may be defences available to you to win your case, such as demonstrating the Crown has not proven the case against you beyond a reasonable doubt, technical defences, exposing police errors, challenging the admissibility or credibility and reliability of the evidence, or arguing that your Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms were violated. It is important to have legal representation to help you navigate the court process and defend your rights.
Contact Kruse Law Firm
If you are facing legal issues related to impaired driving, Kruse Law Firm can help. We offer free consultations to help you understand your options and determine the best course of action. We have several locations throughout Ontario, including Windsor, London, Kitchener, and Toronto.
Our experienced lawyers will provide you with the guidance and representation you need to navigate the legal system and achieve the best outcome for your case.
Don’t wait to get the help you need. Contact Kruse Law Firm today.
Video Transcription:
Once we have those documents, the lawyer’s in a position to meet with you and carefully review to see if you have any defences – any technical defences, charter applications, and provide you with a legal opinion. Criminal law – and DUI law – boils down to this: as a lawyer you have to analyze ‘what are the client’s odds of winning this case? Where on the spectrum does it lie? And what is the crown offering?’
For example, if you have a good case to win, and the crown’s not offering any deal, obviously you’re going to take that case to trial. If, on the other hand, your case if very serious and difficult to win, you want to try and minimize the penalty as much as possible. So that’s a discussion we have at that first meeting where we review the disclosure. Now, often times the disclosure is missing – or you know there’s disclosure we have to order and we get that before we can finalize our opinion.
This is called the remand process – it’s like an intake court – and that can last for 2-3 months in a DUI case. We’re meeting, we’re reviewing the case, I’m meeting with the crown to get their position and see if we can work it out or we’re heading to trial. At all steps of the process, we’re going to keep you informed on where the case is heading, what our opinion is, but most importantly what you want to do. That’s your decision – not ours – but we will help you and guide you.
Of course if you’re dreaming of ignition interlock (an intoxilizer in your car that limits driving based on your alcohol levels), if you instruct us to enter a guilty please, we try and get that done as soon as possible because that’s to your advantage, to qualify for ignition interlock, which I talk about in another video tip.
So let’s assume for a second that you’re heading to trial. So at the end of that 2-3 months process, most counties in the province are going to require what’s called a judicial pretrial. That’s a fancy term for a meeting with the judge where the crown attorney [and] your defence lawyer meet with the judge, and talk about trial issues – managing court time, how long your case is going to take, who the crown are calling as witnesses, and to see if there’s any way of resolving it. Obviously, if we were offered a careless driving offer because the crown thought we had a decent case to win, we might consider that. So that’s another reason to have the judicial pretrial – to talk to the judge.
Now the judge is not the trial judge, this judge is managing the system, managing court time so at the end of that process of say 3 months in, we’re ready to set your trial date. Your trial date in Ontario is going to take place – depending on the country – anywhere from 4-8-10 months, in that range – after the judicial pretrial. So we’re already up to a year in before you have your trial date. And of course at your trial date, we’re diligently preparing at the time, we’re filing any applications which need to be done. Often those are called charter applications, and then we’re preparing you to testify. We’re preparing to cross-examine the crown’s case. We’re there to win. That’s our goal and our job, and we have a consistent winning track record for cases we take to trial.
So there it is in a nutshell. That’s the short version of the court process for a DUI. You could be dealing with your lawyer for anywhere from 1-2 months up to a year or longer, depending of whether you resolve your case via a plea, or hopefully the crown withdraws your charge, to when you complete your trial. And typically the average DUI trial in Ontario is probably a one-day trial, if a more complex case it might take two. So there you have it. That’s a summary conviction impaired driving timeline and the court process for impaired driving.
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