Our client drove his pick up truck into a hydro pole located on the sidewalk of a busy street in downtown Toronto. A security guard approached the truck and saw that our client was asleep behind the wheel. Police were called and had to bang on the driver’s side window to wake our client up. After speaking with our client, police charged him with impaired driving and brought him to the police station to provide samples of his breath. At trial, we exposed significant inconsistencies between the evidence of the two officer’s on scene and between the evidence of the two officers and video footage recorded by cameras on the police car and at the police station. We also successfully argued that a number of our client’s Charter rights were breached, including his right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure (the arresting officer did not have reasonable and probable grounds to believe he was impaired) and is rights to counsel (he should have been given an opportunity to call a lawyer before he was taken to the police station). The trial judge excluded the results of the breath tests and found that the prosecution had not proven beyond a reasonable doubt that our client was impaired. Both of the charges against our client were dismissed.
