3. Apply for a change of venue

You may want to ask a judge to transfer your charges because you don’t think you can get a fair trial where you were charged. This may be due to publicity or the type of people who live where you were charged.

To do this, your lawyer makes a change of venue motion. This motion must be made before your trial starts, as part of the pre-trial motions for your case. Before any motion is made, a Notice of Application must be served on the Crown and filed with the court.

You can only do this if:

• you’re charged with an indictable offence, and
• you made an election to have your trial in the Superior Court with a jury

Your lawyer must show that it would be hard to find a jury that would try your case fairly. This might be the case if there have been many news stories about your case, and the place where the charges were made has a small population.

A successful change of venue motion is rare. You won’t be allowed to change the location without a good reason.