Legal Grounds in Canadian Criminal Law
Reasonable and probable grounds are two terms that are often used interchangeably in Canadian law. These terms are used to determine whether or not a police officer has the legal authority to make an arrest or conduct a search without a warrant.
What Does Reasonable and Probable Grounds Mean
Reasonable grounds refer to the level of suspicion that a police officer must have before they can make an arrest or conduct a search without a warrant.
In order for a police officer to have reasonable grounds, they must have enough evidence to make a reasonable person believe that a crime has been committed or that the person being arrested or searched is involved in criminal activity.
For example, if a police officer sees someone breaking into a car, they would have reasonable grounds to arrest that person for theft. In this case, the police officer witnessed the crime, and there is no doubt that a crime has been committed.
Or for example, the police receive a call about a DUI Driver. The call is sent out and a police officer sees the vehicle subsequently stopping it. The officer has reasonable grounds to believe the driver may be impaired, but not reasonable and probable grounds without stopping and speaking to the driver.
However, in some cases, the evidence may not be as clear-cut. For example, if a police officer receives a tip from an informant that someone is selling drugs out of their house, they would need to investigate further to determine whether or not there are reasonable grounds to make an arrest or conduct a search.
In this case, the police officer would need to gather additional evidence, such as conducting surveillance or obtaining a search warrant, before making an arrest or conducting a search.
What are probable grounds?
Probable grounds are a higher level of suspicion than reasonable grounds.
In order for a police officer to have probable grounds, they must have more than a mere suspicion that a crime has been committed or that the person being arrested or searched is involved in criminal activity.
They must have enough evidence to make a reasonable person believe that it is probable that a crime has been committed or that the person being arrested or searched is involved in criminal activity.
For example, if a police officer receives a tip from an informant that someone is selling drugs out of their house, and the officer conducts surveillance and observes numerous individuals coming and going from the house, they would have probable grounds to make an arrest or conduct a search.
In this case, the police officer has gathered enough evidence to make it probable that a crime is being committed.
Reasonable & Probable Grounds in Practice
For example, if a police officer is responding to a domestic violence call and there is reason to believe that someone’s life is in danger, the officer may be justified in making an arrest or conducting a search without a warrant in order to prevent harm to the victim.
In order to determine whether or not a police officer had reasonable grounds to make an arrest or conduct a search, the courts will consider all of the available evidence at the time of the arrest or search. This includes any information that the police officer had at the time, as well as any evidence that was gathered after the fact.
If it is determined that the police officer did not have reasonable grounds to make an arrest or conduct a search, any evidence that was gathered as a result of the arrest or search may be excluded from evidence at trial.
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Reasonable and probable grounds are two terms that are used in Canadian law to determine whether or not a police officer has the legal authority to make an arrest or conduct a search without a warrant. Reasonable grounds refer to the level of suspicion that a police officer must have before an arrest.
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