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What is Detention Versus Arrest?
There legally is a world of difference between "arrest" and "detention." Any interaction with the police will usually place the subjects of police intention in one of three legal states:
Investigative Detention - purely a common law power to hold onto someone for a brief period of time while checks are conducted. There are time limits beyond which a detention effectively turns into an arrest.
Arrest - will usually be pursuant to a statutory power exercised under the Criminal Code, authorizing holding onto someone for a longer period of time than detention, including transport to another location, subject to rights to counsel and a bail hearing.
Neither Detention Nor Arrest - not every interaction with police amounts to arrest or detention. Police have the right to ask you a few questions, even if you don't need to answer all of them. But if it appears even implicitly that you can't leave, then it might be a detention.
The distinction among the three categories is vital to know what rights you had at the time, like whether the police were obliged to advise you of your right to counsel.
Why Retain Our Firm to Challenge Your Arrest or Detention?
The firm’s Principal Barrister Gordon S. Campbell has approaching three decades of experience dealing with detention and arrest issues, including serving as a Federal Crown Prosecutor for almost a decade, authoring three law books on detention and arrest used by police officers throughout Canada, and in conducting hundreds of trials and appeals up to the level of the Supreme Court of Canada, most recently involving defending the rights of his clients at all levels of courts.
Why Challenge Detention or Arrest?
Law enforcement powers to detain or arrest individuals are very limited. Arrests are not possible on whims or suspicions. An unlawful detention or arrest can be the start of a series of unlawful domino-like events: (a) unlawful search, (b) leading to unlawful seizure, (c) giving rise to unlawful statement taking, and (d) culminating in unlawful charging.
The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms provides people subject to illegal arrest or detention with remedies, including exclusion of evidence and staying of charges.
How to Challenge Detention & Arrest: 4 Winning Pre-Trial Motion Strategies
Liberty is among the most fundamental of all human rights, and its deprival in an arbitrary way is among the worst of human rights abuses. Canada's Parliament and courts have articulated the limited circumstances where someone can be deprived of his or her liberty through detention or arrest. Absent lawful authority, police have no general power to detain or arrest.
There are a variety of circumstances where police detention or arrest may be unlawful, and your lawyer could bring a pre-trial motion to have the detention or arrest declared unlawful and seek to exclude all resulting evidence.
1. A search warrant is needed to arrest in a residence
In situations of a high expectation of privacy, police do not get an ancillary search power to perform an arrest. An arrest may be unlawful if performed in a residence without an arrest warrant granting the power to enter the residence.
2. Racial profiling can't be underlying reason for detention
Racial profiling need not be conscious, and is now well accepted by Canadian courts to be a daily reality that visible minorities throughout Canada can be subject to through unwarranted police stops and questioning. While it might be difficult to prove in court, where there is at least circumstantial evidence that the origins of a detention or arrest lie in racial profiling, courts may be inclined to exclude evidence and dismiss charges.
3. A pretext traffic stop can't be used to question or search for evidence of other offences
While police possess broad powers to conduct traffic stops, such as to check licence and insurance details without outward signs of an offence, such stops can't improperly be merely a pretext through which to engage in a probing exploration of suspected criminal conduct.
4. A pedestrian can't be detained for questioning without cause
Police who pull a cruiser in front of a pedestrian's path, or stand in such a way to block a pedestrian's travel, need a legitimate reason to detain and question that person. Police can't go on fishing expeditions, detaining people they don't like the look of in particular neighbourhoods, hoping they'll discover evidence of some kind of offence.
When to Challenge an Arrest or Detention?
If the police won't release you from custody after a reasonable period of time, the arrest should be challenged immediately either through a bail hearing if charges have been laid, or a Habeas Corpus application if no charges have been laid.
If you're out of custody, then the validity of a detention or arrest is usually best challenged at trial. An illegal detention or arrest could lead to a variety of remedies, like a stay of the charges because of the inherent illegality of the infringement of your liberty rights, the exclusion of statements you might have given to police, or the court forbidding evidence seized from you to be admitted at trial.