OHTA.ca

Hey guys,

been reading the forums alot lately and i love the information. hope i can be of some help to some people in the future as well.

here is my situation.

I was travelling south on highway 69 and an OPP cruiser was traveling northbound on Highway 69, i was in the left lane passing a car. at which point i saw the OPP cruiser in my driver side mirror passing me, shortly after he did a u turn, and was hitting speeds of up to at least 140 km/h to catch up to me, after getting fairly close to me he turned on his lights and pulled me over.

came to my car and stated exactly this "i stopped you for speeding". i gave him my information. he left, came back and issued me a ticket that states i was speeding 117km/h in a 90km/h zone. also on the ticket it states "R" so he reduced it apperantly.

my issue is the following:

1. how sure is he that i was the car that was speeding? only because i was in the left passing lane?

2. did he radar me or pace me?

3. i live in toronto and this is 3 hours away. will the prosecutor fax/mail me the disclosuers?

i tend to fight this and take this to trial 100% as i did not like the officers attitude and lack of explenation, nore did i speed.

i have drove to sudbury to file for trail and did so, now i am waiting for notice of trial to appear and then i will request for disclosure. any ideas what i should be asking for in the disclousre besides the basic officers notes, original notice of offense?

thanks so much everyone! any information at all would be great!

1. Until you get disclosure from the officer, you will not know "how sure" he was that you were the car. Definitely something you could question him on in cross examination at a trial.

2. Again you won't know until you get disclosure.

3. When I have provided an email address in my disclosure request, I have been sent the disclosure by email.

Not liking the officers attitude and lack of explanation will do NOTHING with regards helping you win your trial. All the Justice of the Peace cares about is whether the prosecutor can prove you were speeding beyond a reasonable doubt. If you take the witness stand at the trial and admit that you were speeding even 1 km/h over, you will be found guilty, end of story. Are you willing to testify under oath that you were NOT speeding at all?

With disclosure request, this is the most recent one I used:

DISCLOSURE REQUEST

With regards to the charge information above, please accept my request for the following disclosure so that I can prepare a defense, and make full answer to the charge:

- A copy of BOTH sides of the original Certificate of Offence;

- A full copy of the officer's notes. If any part of the officer's notes are not legible, please have the officer provide a typed copy as well. If short-form writing is used in the officer's notes, please have the officer provide an explanation for the short forms;

- The make, model and serial number of the radar/laser unit used;

- All manuals for the unit used. Please provide the FULL manual(s) with all pages;

- Proof of officers training for the unit used;

- Proof of calibration and accuracy of unit used (including but not limited to: calibration policies and procedures, calibration records, repair history, maintenance records, and/or other records/certificates for the unit;

- A copy of the driving record which may be tendered at trial;

- Audio / Video Recordings;

- Copies of Certified Documents;

- Copies of witness statements and "Will-states" for all witnesses;

- Any other pertinent materials related to this case governed by R. vs STINCHCOMBE;

- I also request that you advise me of any information, which is not being disclosed and an explanation for such non-disclosure.

Please mail disclosure to the address below. If it's more convenient for you, I can accept disclosure by email at my@email.com

With OPP you will probably only get a few pages of the manual, but I ask for the whole thing anyways. You will probably get nothing with regards to accuracy and calibration as well (I have been looking into this one and have not found any good case law yet where they need to provide anything like this).

So received disclosure, i was not able to read the officers notes what's so ever.

i requested for additional disclosure to have the officer type out his notes.

its less then 13 days from court date and i have no typed notes.

i filled for a Form 4F. the prosecutor decided to call me. and she stated that it was sent out couple days ago.

whether it was sent out or not, should that not be an issues as it was sent less then 2 weeks before trial?

could i not still proceed with the motion of a stay of proceedings?

The case law for not providing disclosure says that the proper rememdy is for the JP to tell prosecutor to get you the disclosure and re-schedule the trial. You would have to have the trial rescheduled a couple times before a JP would consider dropping charge because of lack of disclosure.

Personally if I did not get the disclosure more than 2 weeks before the trial, then I would ask for an adjournment (new trial date) as I did not have enough time to prepare.

So you can try your stay of proceedings motion (never hurts to try) but most likely the JP will just set a new trial date.

Don't forget if it was REDUCED you risk having the full speed reinstated when attending trial. That's more money and likely more demerit points. Usually when you get a reduced roadside, best advice is to just go pay it unless you can prove you weren't speeding...my 2 cents...

They can only raise it back to the original speed once the trial starts, AFTER you plead not guilty and AFTER the officer has given testimony of the higher speed. They will say they are going to raise it as the trial starts (or they will tell you that before the trial starts), but you can decide to plead guilty to the lower charge basically right up to the point that the officer is taking the witness stand. They can not raise it back up unless the officer is on the witness stand and testifies to the higher speed.

With that said, demerit points are usually not an issue for most people unless you already have several chrages racked up on your record. Insurance does not care about demerit points. 10 over with 0 demerits will affect your insurance the same as 29 over with 3 demerits as these are all considered MINOR by the insurance company. So if you fight it and lose and it gets raised back up, the demerits may go up (not a big deal) and the fine will go up (maybe a big deal) but you still get the experience learning how to fight it. And you still have the opportunity to appeal.

If the reduced charge is considered MINOR by your insurance but the higher charge is considered MAJOR then this would be a time to more likely consider paying the reduced fine and not fighting it.