Summary

In the course of a criminal trial in a court of law, the parties may need to request the collection of additional evidence. Yet such a request is justified only under certain circumstances. Pursuant to Subsection 276 (1) and 297 (3) of the Code of Criminal Procedure, the courts have been provided relatively broad grounds to refuse to satisfy a request for collection of additional evidence. Pursuant to clause 276 (1) 2), the court must evaluate whether the party making the request has sufficiently justified failure to submit the request earlier. Under clause 1 of that subsection, the court must assess whether the additional evidence is relevant to the adjudication of the criminal matter in question, and under clause 3, the court must weigh whether the relevance of the request is proportionate to the time necessary for or the complexity of collecting the evidence. A party submitting a request for the collection of additional evidence should bear the provisions of subsection 276 (1) in mind.

In this article, the author examines the timeliness of a request for the collection of additional evidence and the justification for such a request. The author also endeavours to determine the cases in which additional evidence is not relevant to the adjudication of a criminal matter for the purposes of clause 276 (1) 1) of the Code of Criminal Procedure, and also the most important aspects to bear in mind in evaluating the relevance of a request under clause 276 (1) 3) of the Code.