Delay the Trial

This strategy should only be used if your trial is held within one year of your offence date. Otherwise you may have better luck making a charter application for an unreasonable delay (covered in Step 4).

The biggest obstacle in your path is the police officer. If he is there in court, you should request an adjournment. You need a good excuse but typically requiring more time to prepare your defence or stating you have further disclosure requests will be convincing enough.

Another strategy is to make a motion in advance of the trial to change the trial date. You do this by filing a motion with the court. Typically a separate court hearing is required to set a new date and the officer will likely not be at that hearing. The chances of correctly determining the availability of the police officer to come to your trial diminish when he is not there to confer with the prosecution.

By combining these two delay strategies, you increase the odds that the officer will not show up at your trial. If he is not there, say you are prepared for trial. They have to drop the charge as there is no prosecution witness. Use this strategy carefully. Dragging the case out will only be tolerated so far by the justice.

The down side is that this strategy stretches the trial process out but does not allow you to argue unreasonable delay since you are the cause of the delay. It also takes up your time which means missing work. Consider this strategy carefully before you decide to use it.