Roadside Statements, Hearsay, and Evidentiary Traps

This is the second instalment in our four-part October series examining the practical and legal realities of BC Traffic Court.

Most motorists convicted in British Columbia traffic court lose their case long before they ever get a chance to tell their version of events. The facts that could establish their defence may be fantastic. Nevertheless they lose because they do not understand how the evidence enters the court record.

The damage frequently begins at the roadside. When an officer pulls a driver over, steps up to the window, and asks a casual opening question like, “Do you know how fast you were going?” or “Did you see that light turn yellow?”, motorists treat it as a conversation. A response such as “I was just keeping up with the flow of traffic” or “I was running late” is treated by the police as a direct confession.

In traffic court, however, the officer cannot simply stand up and recite your roadside remarks without meeting strict legal hurdles. Under Canadian law, statements made to a police officer, who is a person in authority, are subject to scrutiny. To enter those statements into evidence, the prosecution often has to establish voluntariness in an admissibility hearing, known as a voir dire.

Unrepresented drivers almost never realize this.

They do not challenge the admissibility of the statement, nor do they test whether the officer properly took notes or breached their rights. Instead, they sit in silence while the officer reads their roadside admissions directly into the record, regardless of whether they should be considered by the court.

The worst part about this is that, even though the court may pay little regard to these admissions or, in fact, disregard them entirely because of potential violations of Charter rights, an individual conducting a trial on their own will find themselves governed by this threat of the admissions in any event. In other words if you don’t know what evidence the court is going to rely on, you don’t know what evidence you need to address.

The confusion about what evidence is admissible runs both ways.

Drivers regularly arrive in court armed with handwritten notes from their passengers, printouts of weather forecasts, or invoices from a mechanic asserting that a tire size threw off their speedometer. When the driver attempts to hand these documents to the bench, the prosecution will immediately raise a hearsay objection.

Under rules of evidence in BC, out-of-court statements tendered to prove the truth of their contents are typically inadmissible. To the extent that they may be admissible, their use is strictly limited. A piece of paper cannot be cross-examined. If you want the evidence of your passenger or your mechanic before the court, that person must attend court, provide their evidence and and submit to cross-examination by the officer or the Crown.

Similarly, drivers often attempt to offer opinions on speed-measuring device angles, laser refraction, or reaction distances.

Unless formally qualified by the court as an expert witness, your lay opinions on physics and engineering will be excluded or listened to politely and then rejected when the decision is rendered .

30 years ago, we recognized that it was important for people to be able to mount a serious defence of their traffic tickets. When we started, lawyers simply did not go to traffic court and if they did, it may be on only one occasion in the course of their career. We are the original BC Driving Lawyers, and we understand the rules of evidence that govern your trial. Decades of experience in traffic court give us an edge.

If you have a court date approaching and want to keep points off your record, call the original BC Driving Lawyers at 604-608-1200. We can help.