Why Do So Many Criminal Cases Take Years To Resolve?

You’ve probably seen it in the news. Some criminal case in Ontario or in Canada takes years to resolve, and everyone’s up in arms and wondering why this situation is and I did another video on a similar and related topic about section 11b trial delay and how a case may be potentially thrown out. But in this video, I want to break down why do some cases in Canada take years to resolve? And go through the basic steps and reasons for that, and I’ll outline each one I think off the top my head. So first of all, disclosure delays.

Now, some criminal cases are very complex. There’s like, literally tons of disclosure, like boxes of materials and, documents and all electronically because and they come in phases, and defense counsel is not able to set a trial date until they understand at least enough of the case to be able to set at trial. And I’ve been involved in cases where we don’t even have complete disclosure, like one year into the matter, we still keep getting it from the police, and this is a problem, and it leads to delays.

And it happens in a lot of complex cases. Sometimes it happens in even simple cases, which is more of a negligence issue, frankly, by the police or the crown. But occasionally happens, but usually when there’s a delayed disclosure, it’s often a complex case. Let’s say you have a trial, for example, that’s set, and then it’s set a year or two in, two years in, and then the night before the trial starts, the Crown phones you up “I got another 1000 pages of electronic disclosure.” The Trial needs to get delayed.

It happens all the time, unfortunately, and then the case might get thrown out if enough delay happens pursuant to the other video I did about section 11 B delay by the way, you have a right to be tried in a reasonable period of time in Canada, section 11 B in the charter. And there’s timelines, which I review in another video, 18 months for the Ontario Court of Justice and 30 months for the SCJ. I commend you to watch that video. You learn a lot about delay in that, but I’m going through the reasons here.

Next reason, court backlogs in a particular county, we only have so many courts if there’s more trials than courtrooms, things get backlogged, cascading delay. Look, we’re trying to find time to do this, and the courts are booked a year and a half down the road, so that causes delay. These are called court backlogs, and it happens in more busy jurisdictions.

I always say Brampton as being a very busy jurisdiction where we have extensive delay problems. We need more resources. We need more judges, we need more courtrooms, etc. It’s less of a problem in smaller counties, but there are some smaller counties in Ontario that have significant trial delay problems, but that’s what I call a court backlog situation, where there’s so many trials set, we don’t even have an opening to set a trial date for another year and a half, for example.

Thirdly, some cases are very complex. I mean, I’ve been involved in cases that would boggle the mind with literally 10s and 10s of 1000s of documents, these require more preparation time for both the crown and defense. And defense might choose, for example, to put the matter off a bit to gain understanding of the matter or the crown and again, if disclosures arriving in a piecemeal fashion, coupled with the complex evidence that requires extensive preparation, that can cause court delays, where the trial gets delayed and put off or even adjourned, in some of the examples I gave.

Multiple accused, when you have a whole bunch of co-accused charged with the same information. Say, let’s take a sexual assault trial with five or six men are, unfortunately charged with a gang sexual assault, rape, very serious charge.

You’ve got like, five different lawyers. We have to coordinate schedules with a judge’s schedule, the crowns, five different lawyers, and it’s hard to coordinate at a time where they’re all available, so that gets put off and can cause delay. So that, I call that multiple accused.

Next one, adjournments and scheduling conflicts. Again, sometimes the crown will ask for an adjournment because they’re not prepared. There’s further disclosure or some legal issue arises on the eve of trial.

Sometimes the defense counsel, it does happen. Maybe there’s a scheduling conflict where we can’t find a judge for that particular court. So, things go over and over and the years mount on. There are also complex cases, for example, sexual assault, murder trials, serious charges we have what are called pretrial motions and charter application, which can take days, and they’re complex. That’s held before the trial, so we have to schedule time for that. Then we have to have a gap in time between the pretrial motion and the trial, because the judge has to make rulings that we have to react to. So, matters get put over. It happens a lot in Ontario, less so in smaller counties, but our firm has, in many cases, thrown out for delay pursuant to 11b because of these issues which we’ve won or stayed, I should say, is the same as getting a case dismissed.

Systemic resource issues, this is the overall problem, and I’ve touched on it throughout here, not enough judges in a particular county, not enough crown attorneys, not enough interpreters. We can’t find court time. We can’t even set this trial for two years from now. I go into a particular county, and I asked for a trial date today. “Well, Mr. Kruse, the first available courtroom is a year and a half from now.” That’s the way it is in some counties, and this causes delay. And the solution to this for the government is, frankly, to hire more judges and more crown attorneys, and that would solve the problem. I know the States, most states, do a much better job than Canada moving their cases much more efficiently.

They appear to have enough judges and prosecutors. It’s always shocked to me, how quickly they move their cases. We can’t do that here because we don’t have enough resources. So, there’s a little primer on some of the many reasons for delay. It is an ongoing problem in the province, in some counties, worse than others. But I’m really happy to join you today and explain this to you, because a lot of people don’t understand. They think the defense lawyers are just putting the matter over, and that that could happen too, by the way, sometimes defense causes delay, but in most instances, I’m finding it’s a court cause backlog, delay for all the reasons I mentioned. Thanks so much for joining me today.