January 2019 I was charged for Handheld device - Got court date in the mail, Officer provided notes, requested DVD several times, no response from officer. Prosecutor asked the officer the day of the trial, officer said he did not have any. JP asked me if I just wanted to proceed to trial. I said no I wanted to speak to a paralegal and they delayed the trial until the end of july which is 18 months after I was charged.

My question is because I asked for time to speak to a paralegal after requesting the DVD several times with no response from the officer am I considered delaying the trail or is that on the crown for letting me know the day of the trial there was no DVD evidence.

Thank you!

When was your 1st trial date and were you certain there was DVD by the officer

My first trial date was mid February of 2020 just a couple of months ago. I went to that trial without a response from the officer about whether their was DVD evidence. When I got to trial I told the prosecutor and she simply asked the officer quickly before I had my time with the JP. The JP informed me as he was asking for my plea that I have all the evidence now knowing that there is no DVD and asked me what I wanted to do. I requested to delay the trial because now that I know what all the evidence is I want to present it to a paralegal.

Unfortunately, the delay will be attributed to the defence. Put simply, you weren't ready for trial. You were the one who asked for more time because you wanted to get legal representation; not as a result of lack of disclosure (since you already had all the disclosure that the prosecution was relying on). Any Charter application will almost certainly fail since you'll have to satisfy to the court why it was necessary for you to wait until your trial date to decide you needed legal representation---you should have hired a paralegal well before trial and been ready to proceed on that day with the disclosure you had. Had the prosecution given you new evidence, then the delay would be attributed to the prosecution since you can't be expected to answer to a case when you don't know the full case. The court will view the adjournment request as not being disclosure-related but so you could get legal representation. Preliminary matters should be handled by either a motion, application or requesting a Judical Pre-Trial (JPT) BEFORE trial so as to not waste the trial time slot. Since you didn't do this, you weren't ready for trial, so the delay is attributable to the defense.

Regardless, under the new post-Jordan regime, the time frame is now 18 months from date of offense to trial date. However, given the Covid-19 shutdown and freeze on limitation periods, the clock has stopped. So, delay applications are futile.