Questions about Disclosure Procedures

[hmshiu]

Hi,

I received a Notice of Trail letter recently for a speeding ticket I had received 5 months ago. Now that I finished my disclosure letter, I came across a few questions.

1) My trail is on Feb 13th, 2012 - When is the deadline to mail out the disclosure letter? And when would be the best date to do so?
2) Where do I mail the disclosure letter to? To the court address?
My court is at:
#E10,
1530 Markham Road,
Scarborough, Ontario,
M1B 3M4
3) And who should I address it to as I do not see my prosecutor's name?
4) Once I receive a respond for my request, how many days before the trail date should I wait before I use the excuse "not enough time to prepare my defense"?

Thank you very much for your responds in advance.

 

[Rob MacLennan]

There are two schools of thought on that; as soon as possible after you've received your notice of trial date, or just a few weeks before trial and hope that they screw up. I say as soon as possible so that you can properly prepare, and so you have time to make any additional requests prior to trial.

The address, to send the request to, should be on the back of the offence notice. See the sticky post, section 2.1, for specifics.

 

[sixstring]

And when you do send the disclosure request make sure to write up your own. If the prosecutor's office provides you with a form to fill out, don't take it.

Write up a letter titled Disclosure Request with the prosecutor's office's address, your address, your name, the offence number, the offence date, and the charge. Write that you want complete disclosure for your case. You may also list specific items you know you'll want. Serve it directly to the prosecutor's office and get it stamped and copied. Make sure you sign it.

Don't be intimidated by the prosecutor's office. They can't make you fill out their form. If they don't take your letter, go home and fax it to them. If they don't provide you disclosure, you can make a motion to stay the trial based on inadequate disclosure and you'll have your fax receipt as proof of the prosecutor's office having received it. You may also write an affidavit for the fax receipt.

 

[hmshiu]

Thank you for your replies!

I have decided to write my own disclosure request as sixstring adviced, but I am still a bit unclear on where to mail my letter to (as I prefer mail over fax since my fax machine is old). On my Notice of Trail, there is only the court's address, so is that the place where I mail it to? Any place specific (E10 the court room or Unit D33 - no idea what that is)? Also, I do not see any other names other than my own on the paper , so who do I address it to?

Thank you once again for the reply and help! Greatly appreciate it!