Navigating Aggravated Assault Sentencing

This is a continuation of our series talking about ranges of sentence and I want to talk about aggravated assault under Section 268 of the Criminal Code. This is a very serious offence. I mean, first of all, let’s define it. So, aggravated assault occurs where you wound, maim, endanger the life of or disfigure a person. So those are pretty serious things. I mean, as an example, you take a pipe and potentially hit someone over the head and cause a serious brain injury which is endangers their life that’s aggravated assault, or you take a knife and stab someone which is a wound obviously, or you could disfigure them by scarring them on the face. So these are all very serious charges just below kind of an attempted murder. There’s no intent to murder but you’re intending to assault them. So what are the range of sentences? Well, it’s very wide range first of all. So this is a straight indictable offense. There’s no summary election, because it’s so serious. It’s called straight indictable. By the way, you should watch my video about summary and indictable and what that means. It just means it’s a serious offence though. That’s all it means in simple terms. So the maximum jail term is 14 years but pretty rare, you know, and unheard of to ever get 14 years. I mean that would be reserved for the worst case and the worst offender may be a situation where a person’s in intensive care for a lengthy period of time, and your client has you know, extensive criminal record even then you should be able to negotiate less than maybe 12 years as an example. On the other end of the spectrum, maybe it’s just a more minor wound. A knifing more minor wound. By the way you should be able to negotiate down to an assault bodily harm in that situation to get a few months in jail. A minor wound even though it’s technically aggravated assault is probably overcharging but it is technically if the Crown wants to stick to its guns. So it’s a very wide range of sentence. I mean, a serious wounding knifing attack a couple of stab wounds as an example, I like to give examples, you might face a penitentiary term of two years for a first offender depending on the facts. If you’ve got multiple convictions, even on those more minor, multiple prior convictions, even for minor offences, you know, obviously your sentence could be doubled or tripled over what a first time offender could face. So it’s a very wide range. Let me put it this way, you’re not getting a conditional discharge for aggravated assault. You’re always getting a jail term. It’s going to range from months to years, depending on the severity of the case. And I’ve seen some recent sentences of first time offenders for eight to 10 years Ontario on very serious cases. And on that note and I made this comment other videos, sentencing ranges seem to be slowly increasing in Canada and depending on your predilection and believe me I’m a law and order person. I agree that sentencing should be relevant and I’m not opposing increasing sentences. I’ll fight like hell for my clients, but I’m also a conservative heart. So you know, I will say that. So there’s a wide range and as a defense lawyer, I’m always trying to if I can’t defend it, if the client says, Look, I’m guilty, I didn’t know and I can’t defend this charge, I’m always trying to see if the crown will agree to plead it down to an assault causing bodily harm for a lesser sentence. If we can’t do that. We’re trying to get at a lower range and we want to get the client rehabilitated into counselling. Show that they’re a good person normally. They made a mistake, and that always goes a long way to negotiating with the Crown to get a proper sentence. The crown is shooting for the moon. I’m trying to get this other end, but there’s a reasonable, proper sentence that you can present to a judge and we always try and strive for that if we can’t win the case. So there you have it, a little bit of a primer on aggravated assault. The judges on that note, they’re going to look at general deterrence and specific deterrence those are the important sentencing principles. And I love putting joint submissions in front of judges so that they can give the appropriate sentence that that both the crown and I can live with. Thank you for watching our video. We are absolutely committed to bringing you the best possible criminal and DUI educational videos. If you found this video helpful, please like it and subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you’ve been charged with a criminal offence in Ontario and require our services, please click on the link in description below.