If you are charged with a criminal offence and have been offered diversion, it is generally in your best interest to enrol in the program.  Diversion essentially means you are being diverted out of the criminal justice system. This is because the Crown is agreeing to withdraw all charges against you after you complete the diversion program. This voluntary program is also referred to as direct accountability. The program is designed to enable first time non-serious offenders to avoid the negative impacts of criminal charges and a criminal record.  Diversion allows offenders to avoid the stressful prosecution process and affords better outcomes than those possible in the criminal justice system (except an outright acquittal). Diversion is also beneficial to the state as it relieves the heavy burden placed on the courts, police and probation officers.

The diversion program is not available to everyone; the Crown must offer it to those offenders who are eligible. The only person with the authority to determine who is eligible for diversion is the Crown Attorney (the Office of the Crown Attorney).  When a criminal charge is laid it is vetted by the Crown Attorney’s office. An Assistant Crown Attorney conducts an initial screening to determine diversion eligibility.  The factors the Crown will consider in assessing eligibility are;

• Whether the person has a criminal record or past dealings with police;
• Cooperation with police upon arrest;
• The seriousness of the offence (amount of money lost, alleged harm done, etc.);
• The cost of prosecuting the case in comparison to the seriousness of the offence;
• The impact a criminal record may have upon an individual accused in comparison to society’s interest in ensuring are punished for wrongdoings; and,
• The wishes of the alleged victim (if there is one).

If you are eligible for diversion, then you will be notified by the Crown at or before your first court appearance. It is important to note that an initial screening of ineligibility can be reconsidered. The Crown may be persuaded by counsel to change their unfavourable position. If this is your first offence and you have been advised that you are ineligible for diversion you should contact legal counsel as soon as possible to ensure that all possibilities for diversion are considered.

Diversion programs are dependent on the individual’s willingness to make amends and accept responsibility for their actions. The offender is required to admit responsibility generally for their role in the alleged offence. It is important to remember that upon completion of the program all charges will be withdrawn.  Therefore, your admission to the offence will not impact your criminal record. Also, all conversations you have with the diversion officer are confidential; they cannot be used against you later. Section 717(3) of the Criminal Code of Canada states:

No admission, confession or statement accepting responsibility for a given act or omission made by a person alleged to have committed an offence as a condition of the person being dealt with by alternative measures is admissible in evidence against that person in any civil or criminal proceeding.

Not all charges are eligible for diversion the most common offences to which it is offered are possession of marijuana (small amounts), communication for the purposes of prostitution and theft under $5000. Generally, more serious charges, such as fraud, will not be eligible for diversion.

The program requirements will differ depending on the individual and the charges they are facing.  They can range from counseling courses, charitable donations, community service hours and restitution.  Upon completion of the program the Crown will withdraw the charges.  This means the offender will not be at risk of incurring a criminal record and its dire consequences. If you have been denied diversion it is important to contact counsel to ensure you minimize the risk of a criminal record.

If the same thing were to happen in Toronto, would the blood samples be admissible against Tiger Woods assuming he was charged with impaired driving? According to Canadian law, the blood samples obtained from Tiger at the hospital would be admissible in a Canadian court if and only if certain preconditions are met.

Section 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees that every individual has the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure. The testing of an individual’s breath, urine, or blood constitutes “search or seizure” under the law. In order for the police to obtain the sample without violating section 8 of the Charter, they must establish that the search/seizure is reasonable under the law and obtain a search warrant.

The police would have to obtain a search warrant in order to lawfully obtain the samples. A search warrant must be obtained from a judge. A judge will grant a search warrant if he or she finds that, based on the information contained in an application known as a “sworn information”, the officer has reasonable grounds to believe that the individual was impaired at the time of the accident. Thus, one of officers investigating the Woods collision would have to file a “sworn information” stating that he or she had reasonable grounds to believe that Tiger Woods was impaired at the time of the accident. The officer would also have to include a description of the evidence on which he or she formed that belief. The information cannot be based on the results of the blood, urine or breath test. It would be unfair if the police could use the results of the test in order to obtain permission to obtain those results. Thus, the officer must provide independent grounds on which he or she suspects that alcohol or a drug was involved in the collision. For example, if the officer or any witness smelled alcohol on Mr. Wood’s breath, if the hospital or ambulance staff reported smelling alcohol on Mr. Woods, if empty alcohol containers were found in Mr. Wood’s car, if witnesses described Mr. Wood’s behaviour as indicative of intoxication, etc., these factors would provide evidence to support a search warrant request. The judge would then determine whether the sworn information contained sufficient reliable evidence to issue a warrant.

Even if the officer obtains a warrant, the bodily samples taken from the accused will be inadmissible under s. 8 of the Charter if the defence can prove that they were taken without the accused’s consent, prior to the issuing of the warrant, for no purpose other than evidence collecting. If the samples were taken for legitimate health reasons, the police can obtain them after-the-fact pursuant to a warrant without breaching the Charter. However, the police cannot ask the doctor to take the samples and then go get a warrant. This would constitute a breach of the accused’s Charter rights. In the recent case of R. v. Grant the Supreme Court of Canada explicitly stated that “forcible taking of blood samples” will almost always breach the Charter. If the police were to have a nurse or doctor take the samples from the accused for police purposes, this would likely constitute a forcible taking (as the accused is tricked into giving the sample) and the sample would not be admissible at trial. However, if the samples are taken for legitimate health reasons, there is no reason that they would not be admissible after the fact, so long as the officer can persuade a judge that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the accused was impaired, and obtain a search warrant.

Once the Crown has established that the taking of the samples did not breach section 8 of the Charter, the Crown must prove that the samples are a true representation of Tiger’s Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC) at the time of the accident. To do this, they must establish timing and continuity of the samples.

Under normal circumstances, the Crown benefits from a presumption that the BAC measured in the samples corresponds to the accused individual’s BAC at the time of the offence. In order to benefit from this presumption, the Crown must prove a number of things. For example, two samples must be taken, they must be taken within two hours of the offence, they must be taken “as soon as practicable”, there must not be any unreasonable time delay between the samples, the samples must have been taken by a qualified medical practitioner or qualified technician under the supervision of a doctor, and the samples must be placed directly in approved containers. A number of these conditions may have been lacking in the Woods case. For example, there may have been unreasonable delay between the accident and the taking of the samples, they may not have been taken within the two-hour window, and they may not have been secured directly into an approved container. For this reason, it is unlikely that the Crown will benefit from the presumption. Therefore, the Crown will have to prove that Mr. Wood’s BAC at the time the samples were taken was the same as Mr. Wood’s BAC at the time of the offence. For example, Tiger Wood’s defence lawyer could argue that Mr. Woods consumed the impairing substances right before driving, and that there was not enough time between consumption and driving for the effects of the substances to set in. The Crown will have the burden of disproving this argument.

Proving continuity means proving that the particular bodily samples being entered into evidence did, in fact, come from Mr. Wood’s body and that they have not been tampered with. Under usual circumstances, continuity is presumed because the samples are taken in the police station and immediately sealed and taken to the Center for Forensic Science where they are tested. However, since hospital samples may not have been officially sealed, continuity will be more difficult to prove. The Crown will have to call every individual who handled the samples prior to their collection by the police, as witnesses. In R. v. Katsigiorgis, the court ruled that it is not a violation of s. 8 for the police to seal the samples prior to obtaining a search warrant, in order to preserve continuity. However, there is no evidence that the police did this in the Tiger Wood’s case.

If the Tiger Woods incident occurred in Toronto and the police were able to prove reasonable grounds, obtain a search warrant, establish that the samples were taken for legitimate medical reasons, and establish timing and continuity, the samples would be admissible in a court of law. As the case played out in Florida, the Florida police released a statement saying that they did not suspect any foul play before the rumors about Tiger’s blood samples began to circulate. Assuming the exact same facts occurred in Toronto, this press release would make it extremely unlikely that the Toronto police could obtain a search warrant and seize the samples. This is because, by admitting that they did not suspect foul play, the police admitted that they did not suspect that Tiger was impaired. In other words, they admitted that they did not have reasonable and probable grounds to obtain a search warrant. Thus, if Tiger was indeed impaired at the time of the accident, the evidence of impairment would not be admissible at trial, whether that trial occurred in Florida or Toronto.