Having worked for just a little while in Ontario as a Crown before being tossed into the North, there are a couple of adjustments I have had to make. This blog post is mostly for the benefit of the my lawyer friends, especially those in Criminal law, so I apologize if you have no idea what I am talking about. Think about it, if you never get into trouble with the law, you never have to go to Court, and so you'll never have to understand what I'm talking about. It's a good thing.
One of the major differences that I have experienced since working in Peace River is the combination of Set Date Court, Plea Court and Trial Court all into one Court. At all the courthouses up here, and this could be a small jurisdiction thing (I really have no idea), there is usually only courtroom. If you're lucky there might be two. Peace River, however has also Queen's Bench (Superior Court) so we are graced with a mighty 4 courtrooms.
A typical court day involves Set Date (Docket Court) in the morning, with trials set for the afternoon or after Docket Court finishes. During Docket Court, they call Youth matters first, then Adult matters, then Youth trials then Adult trials. Docket court is always before a judge, so if a matter comes up and the Accused wants to enter a guilty plea, the plea and sentencing happen at that moment. We also deal with basic provincial offences, but actual traffic court trials go before a commissioner and a special traffic Crown. There is also a Fed Crown for all the drug matters, who often leave instructions or come in every couple of weeks.
For those of us former criminal law students who used to get into court early to sign up on the list and get your matters called first, that doesn't happen here. Matters are called all alphabetically and there's no jumping the line except for rare occasions. A typical docket date of pure docket can last a full day, which really puts us into trouble if we have trials set to run when docket ends.
For our friends who wonder about s.11(b), we call it Askov out here, referring to the good old case, and it's not really an issue. We once had an office meeting where we were complaining about 5 month delay between Docket and trial. Sometimes simple matters can get a trial within 3 weeks. It's quite the change.
Trial dates are similar to those in Ontario, but there's a bigger issue of trial collapsing out here. Some days in court I've had 7 trials scheduled, all that don't run or resolve. It is very typical.
It's also quite interesting that major cases can also be scheduled after docket. You can have a preliminary inquiry scheduled for a docket day, with the expectation that docket will end by 11:30 and you'll have to rest of the day to run the prelim. For more major matters, some courts have created special trial only days, where you would schedule 2-3 more serious cases with respect to charges or time requirements.
The judges here also have a directive that if they start a trial, they will finish and deliver judgement that day. The first trial I ran in Peace River started at 10:30 am and judgment and sentencing came out at 6 pm. Lunch break is around the same time as well, from noon to about 1:30, and like almost all courthouses, there is never any good food nearby.
New files for the day are often picked up the morning of at the local RCMP detachment, so a quiet docket day going in could be an illusion when you pick up huge stacks at the police station. The docket Crown is the screening Crown, so often elections and early resolution is decided on the spot, especially when it comes to in custody Accused.
That's about it for how things work, or so I've come to figure out here.
On my first day, I had to set a trial date. I didn't know how and asked the judge. He told me to grab the calendar in front of me, and pick a date that was open. It sure was different than the last time I set a trial date in Toronto.
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