Client Prevails at Trial Against Allegations of Driving While Impaired by Alcohol, Cannabis, and Cocaine

At first blush, the Crown’s case might have seemed insurmountable: an unexplained vehicle collision, apparently poor driving directly observed by the police, a drug recognition officer finding the client to be impaired by drugs after a battery of physical tests, and a bodily fluid test confirming that the client had alcohol and drugs in his system. It was the type of situation where a lawyer’s experience, attention to detail, and ceaseless preparation mean the difference between preserving the accused person’s innocence and leaving them with a criminal record for life.

Tyler MacDonald’s meticulous cross-examination of the arresting officer, together with the carefully presented testimony of his client, revealed that there were innocent explanations for the collision and all the supposed poor driving that the officer observed. Mr. MacDonald’s cross-examination of the drug recognition expert – a police officer specially trained to conduct tests to determine impairment by drugs – revealed errors in the conduct of the tests and exposed innocent alternative explanations for the supposedly incriminating observations of the client that the officer had made. Furthermore, the client testified to past physical injuries that hindered his ability to perform the balance-related tests, and Mr. MacDonald presented corroborating expert medical testimony on this issue.

By the end of the trial, after all the evidence had been presented and after Mr. MacDonald’s submissions to the judge about the shortcomings of the results of the toxicological testing, the client’s innocence of the allegations was the only rational conclusion. He was duly acquitted.